Gift of the Black Virgin (4 page)

She ended her confession by saying into his
shirt, “I’m really struggling to see where I’m going to fit into
your life here. With Anna and your son. And your dog,” she added,
reaching out a hand to touch Otis, who thumped his tail
enthusiastically on the floor in response.

“While I was in Vancouver it all seemed so
possible. But now that I’m here I’m not so sure I can do this.”

Luc shifted his body underneath her and she
tensed. Calmly, he said, “Look at me, Joanna.” Afraid of what he
was going to say, she moved back a little so she could see his
eyes.

“How can you doubt what you mean to me? Of
course you’re going to fit into my life here. I love you more than
I can possibly say. I thought you knew that.” He sighed deeply, and
looked briefly at the ceiling, as if imploring the gods to endow
this stupid woman with the gift of reason. “I’m sorry I haven’t
been with you the way I promised. But you must be able to
understand.” He kissed her forehead as if he were comforting a
small child.

She held herself very still, feeling a bit
like a child. A greedy, foolish one. Tears began to sting her
eyes.

He took another deep breath, then said, “Can
you remember what it felt like when you first heard that your
father died?”

Blinking back her tears, she leaned her
forehead against his hard chest and nodded. It had happened
suddenly, while she was busy on her walking tour. And busy getting
her brains screwed out—by Luc, a man she didn’t even know. The man
she
did
know, James, who’d just proposed marriage to her,
flew to France to give her the bad news and take her home for the
funeral. Her father was the dearest person in the world to her, and
his death was an absolute tragedy.

“And were you able to think of anyone or
anything else but yourself and your loss?”

She couldn’t, she remembered now. She shook
her head against the soft cotton of his shirt.

“Those feelings prevented you from thinking
about me, at the time. And what you’d promised me. Didn’t they? You
couldn’t even leave me a note.”

Horrible as it sounded now, what he said was
true. She’d promised to extend her vacation and run off with him
like the star-struck fool that she was. Run off to an uncertain
destination and an even more uncertain future. It was what they
both wanted, at the time. Instead, she’d allowed James to take her
home.

“But…,” she said in a tiny voice.

He wouldn’t let her finish. “That’s how you
explained yourself to me in Vancouver. You said you left without a
thought of me as soon as you heard your father had died. Isn’t that
true?”

She felt heat rise to her face. “Not
exactly
,” she said. “There were some other
circumstances.”

Like being drugged by the man who said he
loved and wanted to marry me. And tricked. Manipulated…

“But you suffered such a shock that you
couldn’t think straight. That’s what you told me. And that’s why I
forgave you. You see, I understand what grief can do.”

He pulled back so he could look into her eyes
again. Through her tears she saw darkness there. “I understood, and
I forgave you. Didn’t I?”

She nodded, somberly.

“Now you need to do the same for me,
Joanna.”

Ashamed, she buried her face in the side of
his neck. “Of course I understand! But I’m so afraid! I can’t bear
the feeling that I’ve come all this way—I’ve thrown over my entire
life—and you’re not here for me. I feel abandoned. Lost. Maybe
you’ll never be available to me again.” She burst into messy sobs,
her entire body trembling.

“I
am
here for you, my love. You’re
not
abandoned. I’m here,” he said as he kissed her hair.
“What we’re going through is only temporary. Surely you know that.
You won’t lose me, I promise you.”

Staring at the delicate stones in her
engagement ring, she exhaled the breath she didn’t know she’d been
holding, then pulled her face up to his level and kissed his mouth
with a fierce hope. She kissed his face, his thick hair, the strong
hands that were stroking her own hair.

“You promise?” she paused to ask.

“Yes, I do. Daniel will recover and soon you
can meet him. Then we’ll be a family together. Don’t worry,
ma
biche.
Don’t worry.”

“But what if he doesn’t want me? I don’t know
how to be a step mother.” The truth of her words hit her hard as
she spoke them. “When I first thought about it, a blended family,
in the abstract, didn’t seem a huge obstacle. But now, everything
looks different.”

“Shh. Shh. Don’t worry,” Luc said with
another kiss to her face. “Of course Daniel’s always going to be a
priority in my life. But so will you. And don’t think you won’t
make a good step mother. It will take time—for both of you. Daniel
is a very loving boy, and you are a very loving woman. I know he
loves his family, and when we have children of our own he will love
his brothers or sisters.” He kissed her lips softly. “And he will
love you. As I do.”

Jo drew back to stare at him, her eyes
growing large. They hadn’t yet spoken about having children of
their own. She’d been afraid to broach the subject during their
week in Vancouver, agreeing to marry him whatever the future would
hold.

“Oh, Luc. I love you so much,” she said with
a catch in her throat. “You always know the right thing to say.”
She held his face in her hands, pleased at the roughness of the
stubble on his cheeks, and began to kiss him again. His mouth was
the best thing she had ever tasted.

He returned her kisses with an intensity that
swelled her heart, and caused her body to respond with an agenda of
its own.

Each kiss was longer, wetter, deeper than the
one before. More urgent. Suddenly she understood that Daniel was,
in fact, clearly out of danger. Everything was going to be all
right.

Luc was hard and ready to give her what she
wanted.

Her skin prickled with goose bumps as he
pulled off her sweater and kissed her neck, her collarbone, her
shoulders. Her body began to tremble in anticipation. She wanted to
pull his weight on top of her, be crushed by every single one of
his two hundred pounds.

“Stand up,” he said in a voice she hadn’t
heard for weeks. She obliged, turning to face him and pulling his
head into her midriff. His hands caressed her back, warm on her
cool skin. His tongue traced circles along her ribcage, making her
shiver even more.

“You are so beautiful,” he paused long enough
to say. “And you are all mine. I’m going to marry you, and keep you
mine forever.”

A breath caught in her throat. Before she’d
joined the Cult of the Black Virgin, she would have abhorred this
kind of talk from her lover. But she was a different woman now. His
words sent a
frisson
of pleasure up her spine, along the
back of her neck, spreading out to flow just under each ear and
wrap around the back of her scalp. Her face flushed and she smiled.
She was proud to be Luc’s woman.

The Black Virgin had taught her well. Jo knew
now that she wasn’t a complete woman until she gave herself up to
her lover. For it was only by giving up herself, handing her
self
over to Luc, that she could experience the joy of full
spiritual and physical union with him.

He was her other half, and she needed him.
She
required
him. She wanted him to say that he would never
let her go. He was as necessary to her, now, as oxygen.

“Yes,” she said. “I do. I do. I do.” She
helped him pull down her jeans so she could step out of them.

Now she was standing, trembling, in front of
him wearing one of her French-made bra and panty sets. It was
creamy pink and black, all lace and satin, and it told him how long
she’d been waiting for his touch. She hadn’t planned on wearing
such delicate lingerie, but she had no more clean everyday
underwear left in her suitcase.

He kissed her breasts through the lace,
lowered his face to tongue her navel as he ran his hands along her
sides. She pushed her hips a little towards him and exhaled
loudly.

“You make me feel like the most beautiful
woman in the world,” she said to the top of his head. “And I want
to make you feel like the most desirable lover a woman could ask
for.”

He lifted his face to her and she bent to
kiss him. The kiss disbanded time, carrying them to a place where
there was no such thing as concussions, hospital beds, or cancelled
engagement parties.

She helped him shed his clothes until he
stood beside her naked, every muscle tensed and posed to take her.
It had been only a few weeks since she’d seen his big body, yet
again she was as awed by his beauty as she’d been the first time,
in Rocamadour. Her own body felt so fluid she had trouble staying
on her feet and clung to him like a sinuous vine.

“I need a wash,” he whispered hoarsely into
her hair. “Let’s get in the shower.”

There wasn’t a lot of room in Luc’s shower.
It was an old house, with matching plumbing. But Jo didn’t care
about the inadequacies of the plumbing as her lover pulled her into
the spray.

* * * *

Luc fought hard to keep from coming all over
Joanna’s soapy belly as they locked themselves into a
slowly-rotating kiss that seemed to involve more than
mouth-on-mouth, tongue-on-tongue, skin sliding over skin. He was
surprised at the intensity of sensation, as if he’d never kissed a
woman so perfectly desirable, so exquisitely delicious yet hungry
at the same time.

His tongue slid in and out of her mouth,
searching out her very essence, tasting her, teasing her,
expressing his desire and his need. Hot water sluiced around them,
her hands as warm and wet as the soapy water.

“
Non, non, non.
Don’t touch me,” he
panted into her ear as one of her hands encircled his cock. “Not
yet, anyway,” he said as he pulled her hand up to his chest and
ground his cock along the slippery expanse of her belly. “It’s too
good,” he said as he tried to stop himself from pushing his hips
into her. Her gyrations weren’t helping his resolve any.

“Turn around,” he said, wrapping his arms
around her to hold her still. “I want to come inside you.” Once she
obliged he slipped his cock between her wet buttocks and slid it up
to her tailbone, shuddering. “Bend over. A little more.”

The image of her wet, dark hair plastered
against her straight back, her round little ass raised as high as
she could manage in the cramped space, rivulets of water streaming
across her smooth skin, was one he hoped to keep alive in his mind
for the rest of his life. He was struck by such a fierce wave of
desire that he froze, shocked at the sensation made almost violent
by emotion. Then he pulled down his cock and plunged deeply into
her, pleased at the part gasp, part grunting noise she made when he
pulled her body back onto his. Bending his shaking knees, he
withdrew almost all the way and plunged again. Trying to hold onto
her, he pulled back and rammed into her again, and again.

He lost all bearings—it was as if he was
being turned inside out through the end of his cock. He flooded
into her, helplessly, seemingly forever, only to regain awareness
when he felt cool water running over his body.

They’d drained the tank. He made a mental
note to buy a bigger one for their new house.

Our new house, he caught himself thinking.
Joanna and I, in a home together. With Daniel. And then, maybe
someone new…?

He turned off the water, helped Joanna out of
the shower and wrapped her and then himself in a towel. After she
dried herself she twisted her long hair up in the towel and kissed
him again.

“I think you needed that,” she said
playfully, rubbing her still-hard nipples along the hair on his
chest.

“How could you tell?” He said, lifting her
off her feet and carrying her into his bedroom. She squealed as he
dropped her onto the bed and clambered over top her, kissing her as
if it was their first time all over again. “Now I’m going to give
you what
you
need,
mon amour.
”

Undoubtedly she had one of the most
delectable feminine bodies he’d ever seen. Medium height, slender
yet curvy. All her dips and hollows were perfectly matched by her
roundness. Her breasts were especially beautiful. Heavy, round,
just the way breasts were supposed to be, and surprisingly large on
such a delicate frame. He kissed them now, licking and suckling the
pointed nipples. She moaned, and he lowered his attentions to her
belly. Then lower.

He liked the fact she hadn’t shaved her pubic
hair—just a little trim around the edges, he saw. Too many women
seemed to feel ashamed of their body hair, and Luc couldn’t
understand why. If they actually asked men, most women would find
that their hair was anything but offensive. He buried his nose in
Joanna’s bush and inhaled deeply.

“Promise me you won’t ever shave this off,
okay?”

She giggled. “Okay. If you like it.” She
arched her back.

“I love it,” he said through a mouthful of
hair. “And I love every other part of you, too.”

She spread her legs a little wider and pushed
her hips upwards. He kissed the damp space between her legs,
savoring her scent, made more intoxicating by a combination of her
desire and traces of his ejaculate. He put out his tongue to taste
her wet labia and was rewarded by a gush of her sweet juices and a
moan coming from somewhere above his head.

“Luc,” she whispered. “I swear I’m going to
come if you so much as breathe on me.”

He smiled and kissed her wet lips, licked
them lightly, then again. He heard another moan, long and drawn out
this time.

Luc knew how to prolong a woman’s pleasure.
He’d already driven Joanna half-mad with excitement on occasions
just like this one. He’d kiss and lick every part of her sex except
that
part—the stiff little button that would make her
explode with ecstasy.