Gift of the Black Virgin (13 page)

When her trembling subsided, he helped his
wife slide down alongside him and fit herself into the sliver of
space available on the mattress. Then she tried to hug him. “That
was amazing.” She was still breathing hard. “Thank you, Patrice,”
she said to the ceiling.

“But I haven’t finished the lesson. There’s
more.”

“That’s all I can handle right now. I was so
turned on by your story.” Her hand snaked down to his cock, almost
completely flaccid. “Weren’t you? Can we try to get you hard?”

“It would be a waste of time,” he said,
shifting awkwardly in the bed. “Is it time for my pill yet?”

Chapter Eight

Two weeks after the accident and Luc could
maneuver through the lower floor of the house with the help of a
crutch. He was weaning himself off the painkillers—with some
difficulty—and insisted that he couldn’t do it without the help of
red wine. Jo had to capitulate. When it came to a lesser evil,
alcohol beat synthetic morphine every time, in her book.

Once he managed to get through twenty-four
hours with only Tylenol-3’s and a liter of wine, Jo knew he was
going to be fine. He was anxious to get back to work on the report
that had been consuming him for the last few months. Luckily, he
could pick up where he left off, working on his laptop in bed, or
more often, seated at the kitchen table.

Daniel resumed his weekend visits, and he and
his father played video games and chess for hours at a time. Jo had
begun a blog on living in France, and increasingly spent her time
writing. It made her feel good to exercise her mind that way again,
and she toyed with the idea of doing some freelance work.

To start with, Brenda had asked her for a
series of stories on the trials and tribulations of adjusting to a
new culture. At first, Joanna wasn’t keen, but as the dreary
January days rolled into even drearier February, she was getting
restless. It would be good to get back to work, she thought. Luc
said he didn’t mind.

Once he was off the painkillers, Luc’s libido
returned. It happened while he was sitting in the tub under the
shower. He’d learned how to get on and off the bath stool himself
and didn’t really need Jo’s help any more. But, one afternoon,
seeing him wet and naked in the tub was more than she could take.
Sneaking up behind him, she quickly peeled off her clothes and
picked up a washcloth to soap his back. Then she climbed into the
tub behind him and leaned over, pressing her breasts into his back,
running her hands down the length of his arms.

To her relief, he didn’t object. In fact, it
took only a moment for her to see that she was more than welcome in
his tub. He tried to turn around and embrace her, but he couldn’t.
His broken leg, still encased in plaster, was elevated and balanced
on the side of the tub. He was pretty much stuck, until he could
get up onto his one good leg.

As soon as she saw his erection, Jo took
advantage of her position. She reached around him and began to soap
his chest, all the while continuing to rub her breasts along his
broad back.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it?” she said near his
ear.

“Mmm.”

“It looks like you’re back, lover.” Her hand
dipped to his cock and lovingly caressed its length. He spread his
legs a little wider for her and bent his head back out of the
nozzle’s spray to rest it on her shoulder.

“You’re so hard,” she said as she wrapped her
hand around his shaft and pulled up, he groaned, and she released
him.

“Let me up,” he said, voice low.

That was when Jo knew her troubles were
over.

She helped him stand and angle himself out of
the tub. Then he grabbed her in an embrace that almost knocked them
both off their feet. When she re-balanced them she handed him his
crutch and they wobbled out to his cot, leaving a trail of water
behind them.

Luc barely waited until she’d hit the sheets
before he tried to climb on top of her.

“Ow, ow! Fuck!” he said as he twisted himself
into an unnatural position, right leg skewed out to the side. “I
have to get on the bottom.”

She deftly slid out from under him and helped
him get settled on his back, then carefully climbed on top of him.
She kissed him deeply, loving the way he tasted, the way his body
felt so hard and slippery between her knees, beneath her belly and
breasts.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she said into his
mouth.

“I’m right here.”

She slid back and forth over his chest, his
belly and thighs, around and around, grinding his cock into her
soft belly. When she was wet and ready, she pulled up into a
sitting position and guided him into her body with shaking hands.
He filled her, he completed her, and just as she began to rotate
her hips to better savor the exquisite sensation of being full of
Luc, she felt his hands clamp onto them. He pumped up into her, she
heard his low, guttural cries, and she knew it was all over.

Despite herself, she started to giggle,
collapsing onto his chest. “Wow! Was that just like the first time?
With Patrice?”

“Yeah. Probably.” She looked up at him to see
that he was smiling.

Ever since she’d stopped taking her
contraceptives, Jo had been carefully charting her menstrual cycle
and taking her temperature to determine when she was ovulating.
Over the next few days she was ripe and she insisted on putting her
poor husband on triple duty. Trying to make a baby after the long
weeks of abstinence made their lovemaking even more exciting than
usual. Sex just kept getting better and better, she thought,
despite the restrictions posed by Luc’s cast.

Then she waited with crossed fingers for the
weeks to pass.

When her period arrived on time, as usual,
she tried to be a good sport about it. They had lots of time, she
rationalized. But her emotions raged as she waited for the next
month, and her next cycle.

While she bided her time, she spent her days
writing, cooking, keeping house, and being the best step-mother she
could to Daniel—and a model wife to her husband. He had never
blamed her for his broken leg. It was silly, he kept telling her,
to blame anyone. It was an
accident
. Eventually Jo stopped
feeling so guilty, but she promised herself she would never
knowingly put him into a risky situation again. He was far too
precious to her.

The break was healing well. Luc went
uncomplaining to his physiotherapy sessions, determined to walk
without a limp. The cast-off party to celebrate his leg being freed
from the itchy plaster shell was a great success. Jo prepared most
of the food herself, to positive reviews.

Then, all of a sudden her husband was back to
work. Again she found herself alone in the big spooky house during
the day. But now she was usually too busy to notice.

Her French was improving rapidly, thanks to
the combined efforts of Daniel, Rose and Luc, and the dogs had
stopped fighting, learning to tolerate each other. Everything was
settling down to routine when a chance encounter delivered a new
home right into the LaPlantes’ laps.

Rose and Robert had a regular customer—a
woman who dropped by the house for vegetables, a cup of coffee and
neighborhood gossip—who knew someone who was preparing to sell
their family estate. Rose knew the house, and she thought of the
LaPlantes right away. It hadn’t been listed yet, she told Jo one
morning in early March, just as the first buds of spring were
starting to swell.

“I’ll take you out there and you can meet the
seller. It’s an elderly couple. They can’t handle the upkeep
anymore. When do you want to go?”

“Right away, I guess. I haven’t been thinking
about property much. Since Luc’s accident, you know. You really
think it would be right for us?”

“
Mais oui! C’est excellent,
” Rose
answered. “It really is. It has gardens and lots of outbuildings,
and several hundred Malbec vines. They call them
Auxerrois
here. Robert would kill to have a vineyard full of
Auxerrois
, he said to tell you. And the house is fabulous. I
can’t wait until you see it!”

Rosie’s excitement piqued Jo’s curiosity,
and, not expecting too much, she agreed to view the house the next
day.

Only a short distance from where they already
lived, the property on offer boasted eighty acres of fertile land,
a renovated nineteenth-century farm house made of top-quality
materials, a barn, vineyard, fenced vegetable garden and countless
fruit and nut trees. As an unexpected bonus, it also had a swimming
pool. And it lay only about twenty minutes outside of downtown
Cahors.

Perfect. It sounds perfect.
Jo grew
increasingly excited as Rose slowed down and pulled off the road,
drove through an open gate, then along a private lane lined with
lavender bushes. She couldn’t help thinking how beautiful they
would look—and smell—when they were in bloom.

The house was hidden from the road, but as
soon as they rounded a bend Jo could see it, sitting on a slight
swelling of land, surrounded by carefully pruned trees and shrubs.
She recognized climbing rose bushes running alongside the front
porch, and what might be a wisteria twined around an arching
trellis. Real leaded windows, heavy wooden shutters, and peaked,
red slate roofs added charm to the smoothly-hewn ivory stone
walls.

Jo thought it was a beautiful house, even in
the glare of a late winter’s morning.

“Oh my God, Rose. It
is
fabulous! I
wonder if we can afford it. Do you know how much they want?” Jo
could feel an anxious knot forming in her stomach. She hadn’t even
stepped out of the car and she wanted the house already.

“
Non.
But if you buy it without a
realtor, you’ll save a lot of money. That’s why I thought you
should see it as soon as possible.”

“Thank you for thinking of us,” Jo said as
she climbed out of the car and gazed around her. “It’s so
private!”

The front door opened and a middle-aged woman
greeted them—the daughter of the owner. After formal introductions
were made, the woman, named Helen, gave them the grand tour.

“My parents have just moved into a residence
in Toulouse, and I am looking after the sale of the house and all
of its contents,” Helen said formally. “If you would like to have
an inspection, I would advise you to have it done as soon as
possible. I need to finish my business here and get back to the
city.”

“Thank you very much for allowing me to have
this opportunity, Helen,” Jo said in equally formal terms. “So far
I love what I see. May I bring my husband back this evening? I am
certain he will be most interested in the property.”

“But of course,” Helen said with a wave of
her hand. “Here. Come and see. Let me show you the lower floor
first.”

Jo and Rose followed the severe woman through
to the sitting room, a large room with walls made of enormous
blocks of honey-colored stone fitted into each other so tightly
they looked like rectangular puzzle pieces. The ceiling was open
wooden beams—probably originals, Jo thought. The entire space
glowed, and she could smell lavender.

“The lower floor is all terra-cotta tiles,”
Helen informed them. “The upstairs floors have chestnut plank
floors, and the staircase is elm.”

The dining room was similarly beautiful, but
one wall had been opened up with large windows to a view of what
looked like a partially-covered patio, beside the swimming
pool.

“These two rooms each have an inglenook
fireplace with a wood-burning stove insert. And in here,” Helen
pointed into the charming rustic kitchen, is a
souillarde.”

“Pardon me?”

“The original farmhouse sink. Made of solid
stone.”

Jo was thoroughly impressed. Not only by the
sink, but by the seamless integration of stainless steel Bosch
appliances and a large, smooth butcher’s block imbedded in a stone
countertop.

Upstairs, Jo and Rose were walked through the
four bedrooms, storage rooms, bathrooms and then climbed the narrow
staircase to a small attic. The views from the tiny window were
magnificent.

Then Helen took them outside to the flagstone
patio, which she called a summer lounge. Under the covered section,
Jo was shown a kitchen, an outside shower, a fireplace and a
complete bathroom.

Although she knew she sounded like a rube,
she couldn’t help exclaiming, “Wow!”

The pool wasn’t large, but it was in good
repair, covered for the winter.

Lastly, they saw the barn. It contained a
guest suite, a three-car garage, a heated workshop and a
half-buried wine cellar.

“You can see the gardens. For vegetables,
over here,” Helen pointed dismissively, as if anyone would be crazy
to want to grow their own food. “And fruit orchards. But the most
valuable part is the truffle trees. Over there.”

Jo looked to where she was pointing and saw a
small copse of oak trees beside the stream.

“Very nice,” she murmured.

Luc’s going to love this.
She couldn’t
stop smiling.

She was still smiling when she shook Helen’s
hand, telling her she would be back at six-thirty with her
husband.

As she walked to the car, she suddenly
remembered something, and turned back to Helen, who was just
shutting the door. “I almost forgot,” Jo said as she ran back to
the porch. “How much are your parents asking?”

The price was high. No doubt. But Jo had
already done her research, and she knew it was fair. They had the
money. It would just be a matter of convincing Luc to let her spend
hers.

“Merci beaucoup. See you soon!”

Jo babbled excitedly all the way home as Rose
drove.

It’s perfect, perfect, perfect!

Jo couldn’t wait until Luc got home from
work. She called him at his office, which she didn’t like to do
unless it was important. This was important. He laughed at her
almost-incoherent description of the house and grounds, and
promised he wouldn’t be late for their appointment. He suggested
they have dinner at one of their favorite bistros afterwards, so
they could talk about the house over a good meal and an even better
bottle of wine.