Claudine (30 page)

“It wasn’t for me. I’ve missed you like hell, Maria.” He moved closer, took her hand. She felt the gentle strength in his grip and melted. “I wasn’t going to say this right off. But there’s no point in pretending. If you’d rather I leave you alone, I will. I just thought . . . it was worth a try.”

It would be so easy to step away, return to the safe cocoon she’d spun in the weeks since she’d left New York. All she had to say was no and she knew Andrei would accept that as final. As Claudine, she’d always had power. Her wanderings through Europe had not altered that. Asking Andrei to stay would change
that equation and she feared the uncertainty of it. She swallowed hard, the words he didn’t want to hear on the tip of her tongue.

But when she looked up at him, she knew she couldn’t deny the decision her body had already made. “I could ask you to go away and I’d be fine, but you’d take half of me with you.”

Andrei pulled her to him; the top of her head just brushed his chin. She could feel the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt, his strong arms around her. She touched his throat with her lips and drank in his warm familiar scent. He captured her face in his hands and kissed her fully, passionately. When at last their kisses cooled, a round of applause from the men seated at a table behind them made them laugh.

They sauntered arm in arm back to his hotel room, a short walk from the café, saying little, basking in the luxury of their nearness. A moment of sheer fear struck her. What if when they got into bed, the intimacy they’d experienced before failed to come again? What if after all that had happened, the harsh words they’d exchanged had taken their toll? Having found him again, she couldn’t bear the thought. She was more open now than any time she could remember in her life. The realization frightened her.

As if he could read her thoughts, Andrei slowed his place and looked at her. “I love you. After we quarreled I could barely think straight.” He stopped and drew her closer. “Promise me you’ll never leave me again.”

His words brought tears to her eyes and her fears slipped away. “I couldn’t imagine being without you again. I belong with you, Andrei.”

As the day had been warm, Maria wore only a light shirt and skirt. In the privacy of his room, Andrei undid her shirt
buttons, spread the wings of the fabric apart, reached around her back, unclasped her bra, and pulled down the straps. His gaze swept her naked breasts. Maria read his deep hunger for her in his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m holding you again,” he whispered. “I almost didn’t come to Crete; I was so sure you wouldn’t want to see me.”

Without a word, Maria opened the buttons of his shirt, pressed herself against his broad chest. Felt their hearts beating in tandem. She put her hand on the dark hair at the nape of his neck, twined the curls in her fingers. She touched her lips to the cleft of his chin.

He kissed her lips again, softly, softly, while his fingers brushed along her ribs and found the exquisite heat of her breasts. He bent his head low and captured a tender nipple in his mouth. She undid his jeans, let them fall to the floor. He unzipped her skirt and it fell too. Holding each other for balance, they slipped off their shoes. They moved to the bed and lay facing each other.

With the lightest of touches, Maria ran her hand down his lean chest, his taut stomach and his cock. His crown grew moist and she felt a slight tremble in his body. He pulled her panties down and she raised her hips to help him. “I like it better this way,” he said, brushing the golden hairs.

They gazed at each other for a long time, a shaft of light from between the curtains burnishing their skin. Maria pressed her hips against Andrei’s. She raised herself on one elbow and pushed him back on the bed. He helped her straddle him, and she swallowed him slowly with her tight heat. She moved up and down with languorous movements, drawing him deeper into her until he filled her completely. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and he buried his hands in it, as though luxuriating in her
beauty. She rolled her hips, circled round and round upon him, squeezing and releasing until his breath grew short and he made tiny moans in his throat. She rode him harder now, and clasped his hands for balance. With their hot palms pressed together, she started to grind against him. The delicious pressure upon her nub caused ripples to flutter deep through her pelvis, roll and spread into her abdomen. She cried sharply at the moment his seed emptied inside her and savored his gruff groan of bliss. Her whole body vibrated with pleasure as she came. The world stopped spinning for a moment, and she lay upon him. He began to soften. She wiggled her rump closer so he wouldn’t slip out. “Just stay inside me forever,” she murmured.

He laughed and ruffled her hair, gave her a kiss. “Happy to. I always did obey your orders, can’t see stopping now.”

After a time, he rolled her onto her side and cradled her in his arms.

They barely left his room for the next five days. Fucking gloriously, learning the landscape of each other’s bodies, telling their secrets, making promises, some of which they kept, some not.

On their last night in Crete they went to a club, a crowded, smoky cubbyhole. The four-piece band played American pop. “Dance with me?” she asked after watching the other couples. She held out her arms.

“I’m not great at it,” Andrei admitted.

She smiled and touched her lips to his. “Finally I’ve discovered something you’re not good at. Just hold me and move to the music. It’s easy.”

They waited until a slow song came on and elbowed through the gyrating bodies on the dance floor. She slipped her hands
underneath his top to feel his bare, sweaty skin. He hugged her close. His dark hair brushed her cheek. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“Hmmm? About what?” she murmured, swaying to the rhythm.

“What we’ll do—in the future. I’ve saved all the money I need to buy a house in Brighton Beach. You liked it there—didn’t you?”

Andrei felt her head nod against his jaw but her shoulders tensed. He continued, “It’s a nice place to raise kids. Maybe two . . . or three. I’ve got enough connections to get a good job . . .”

Her heart sank. She tilted her head back and looked at him.

“Andrei, that’s not my idea of . . .” His wicked smile stopped her short. She gave him a playful slap. “You almost had me there.”

He burst out laughing. “Oh, I don’t know. You’d look pretty good in high heels and an apron—no?”

She laughed.

He pulled her to him. They danced a few turns around the floor before she spoke again. “I want to finish my MA. After that I have no idea, no plans.”

He brought her closer and his voice grew serious. “I have a plan.”

“Tell me.”

“To spend the rest of my life, however long it is, with you.”

The author is a bestselling, international award-winning Canadian novelist whose work has been published in many countries. She’s writing under the pen name
Barbara Palmer
, inspired by the famous seventeenth-century English courtesan and royal mistress.

PENGUIN
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Published in Penguin paperback by Penguin Canada Books Inc., 2014 Simultaneously published in the United States by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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Copyright © Barbara Palmer, 2014

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Cover images: Satin © Alexpi/Shutterstock; Feathers © Roman Malyshev/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
Interior design by Kristin del Rosario.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Palmer, Barbara (Novelist), author
Claudine / Barbara Palmer.
ISBN 978-0-14-319072-1 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS8631.A4485C53 2014 C813'.6 C2014-902038-4

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