“That would seem a practical arrangement,” Ragoczy said, to indicate he was paying attention.
“The bath is between the two bedrooms. I am using the maid’s room as a dressing room. I have a housekeeper three days a week, so I don’t need a place for a maid. My housekeeper is not here today.” She began to climb the second, narrower flight of stairs. “As you see, I have found some prints from the last century; they were in the market by the bookstalls.” She pointed out the framed works on the walls. “I find looking at them puts me in the right frame of mind to paint.”
“Then they are an excellent investment,” said Ragoczy, following her up into her studio. He looked around the sunny expanse with approval, looking up at the four large skylights, and then at the three tall windows at the rear of the room. “Very good, Miss Saxon.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked as she turned around to face him. “I’ve curtained off the window over the canal, to keep the activity out there from distracting me.” She indicated the window in question. “They used to have a small crane out of that window, to unload barges.” Then her eyes grew anxious again. “Count—do you really like this?” “Oh, yes. This is very, very good.” He indicated the two draped easels in the middle of the large room. “New work, I trust.”
“Part of a series of paintings, actually.” She swallowed hard and nodded. “Studies of the canal. They may seem a trifle obvious, but I find the—” She fell silent as she came up to him.
“You need never deprecate your work to me. Miss Saxon; I thought we had established that, last spring.” His dark eyes were somber but there was no rebuke in his voice; he took her hands in his.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I remember.” She stared down at their joined hands, noticing with some surprise that his hands were smaller than her
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own. “Forgive me for being a ninny. It’s just that I have not yet grown accustomed to . . . having anyone accept what I do so readily.”
“Does that frighten you?” he asked kindly.
She tried unsuccessfully to smile. “I rather think it does,” she admitted.
“You have no reason to fear me, Miss Saxon; neither my opinions nor my actions,” he said softly.
“Oh, God,” she murmured, and pulled her hands away from him. “This is very difficult.” She made herself face him. “You see, I have been fretting. I have been wondering if you expected something . . . After how I behaved, that time at my studio, in London, I was certain you would have . . . assumed I was . . . trying to make a trade with you, and—”
“As I recall, I expressed the opposite. I do not bargain in that way.” He put his hand under her chin and turned her face to him. “I do not make it a practice of lying, or of coercion. Miss Saxon.”
This assurance was more flustering to her. “I did not mean that you . . . But you see, when I . . . when I—”
“Kissed me?” he said for her. “You paid me a great compliment, Miss Saxon.”
She stepped back from him. “How can you say that?”
“I can say it because I mean it,” he replied calmly. “I am honored that you showed me such high regard.”
“Is that what it meant to you—that I respect you?” Her confusion was annoying her. “Nothing more than that.”
“You know that I would be glad of more, if you wanted it. I have told you so already.” His musical voice betrayed no hint of dismay as he watched her. “I have not changed.”
“You expect something from me because of it, don’t you?” she challenged. “You assume—”
“I assume nothing. When you have lived as long as I have, you learn that such assumptions are more trouble than they are worth.” His voice was low and steady. He remained at the top of the stairs while she went down the length of her studio as if to put as much distance as she could between them.
Rowena cocked her head and studied him. “I still do not know what to make of you, Count.”
“What troubles you?” he asked; he made no move to approach her. “I don’t know. Perhaps everything.” She flung this at him to see what he would do. When he remained quiet, she relented. “No. That has nothing to do with you. It has to do with me.”
“Tell me,” he encouraged her; he still did not stir from his place at the top of the stairs.
“Every time I have been with you,” she began, then faltered as the immensity of her feelings rushed in on her. “I . . . don’t know if I can explain.”
“You need not upon my account; if you would rather not, then say nothing.” He continued to watch her, his enigmatic gaze following her as she wandered restlessly about the studio.
“But I know I. . . owe you an explanation for—” she said, breaking off as suddenly as she began.
“Miss Saxon, you owe me nothing,” he promised her, the gentleness of his voice all but taking her breath away.
“Then I owe myself one,” she said.
“Ah. That is another matter entirely.” He gave her a slight bow. “I will listen to whatever you decide to tell me.”
She walked away from him, deliberately avoiding his eyes. For a short while she said nothing, but finally she was able to speak. “All the times I have been with you—and there are not that many of them— you have made me aware of things I want for myself.” For an instant she glanced at him and saw a flicker of a smile on his lips. “I don’t mean jewels—not to make light of your gift, for I don’t.”
“No; I did not think you did,” he said when she seemed unable to go on.
“No, I don’t.” She took a deep breath. “When I say ‘things,’ I do not mean objects or possessions, I mean something else.”
“I know,” he told her, so compassionately that she was able to look at him without having to glance away.
“How can you?” she asked candidly. “When I hardly know myself?”
“Will you trust what I tell you?” He saw the skeptical angle of her chin as she nodded. “I know there is a wildness in your soul: I have felt it. It is in your work, in your eyes.” Ragoczy saw her shake her head in doubt. “You are made of passion, and you have yet to learn to embrace it.”
“It is not an easy thing, to trust,” she confessed, adding in a rush, “When I kissed you, in London, I ... I would have given more, if you had asked for it.” She could feel her cheeks go scarlet.
His demeanor was unchanged. “I told you then and I tell you now that when you know what you want of me I will—”
Rowena did not let him finish; she rushed into his arms, holding his shoulders as she pressed her lips awkwardly to his. Only when his arms
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went around her, supporting her and caressing her at once, did she release her grip on him. As the kiss grew longer and more involved she wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck, sighing as she drew a little apart from him. “There.”
Her cheek was soft under his fingers. “Well?”
She took a long breath. “I know that I want you. To make love to me. Now.”
“You are certain?” he said, his need rising to match her own.
“I am certain I want you; that I want you to love me. I have wanted you all along.” Her voice became more deliberate. “I am just as certain that I do not want to be your wife or bear your children.” She shivered at this admission. “If you seek to establish a family, Count, then—” Her hands fell away.
“No; I do not seek either wife or children. For those of my blood, children are . . . impossible.” He whispered this, his compelling gaze on her. “If you wanted them, you could not have them of me.”
She was so startled she almost broke from him. “What do you mean?” “I mean I am not quite what you think me,” he said, feeling his own alienness as acutely as he had felt the buckshot tearing through his side. “It is not some . . . disease, is it?” She winced at the word.
His chuckle was more reassuring than his answer. “No; not the way you mean.”
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“Do not tell me that you . . . prefer men. I won’t believe it.” She was breathless now, and she pressed close to him, sensations in her body she had never experienced so intensely before.
“No, I will not tell you that; the injury that caused the . . . condition is an old one.” He kissed her again, his mouth opening hers, his hands spread over her back to touch as much of her as possible at once, longing for the feel of flesh instead of cloth.
She clung to him. “I don’t care what it is, so long as you desire me, and you will show me how much.”
There was a sadness at the back of his eyes that tweaked her curiosity as it roused her more fully. “I hope so.”
“Let me find out,” she urged him, daring to slip her hands under his coat. “Perhaps we should go down to my . . . bedroom. It would probably be more comfortable in my bed.” Saying this aloud astonished her.
“If you wish,” he said, feeling his first true pang of esurience; his sense of her grew keener as his desire increased.
“I do wish,” she said, becoming bolder now that she had committed herself. She leaned against him, finding his strength comforting. “I have wished this ever since I came to Amsterdam.”
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He stroked her the length of her spine, her frisson of response making him tremble. “Ah, Rowena.”
Rowena pulled away from him, but only far enough to start down the stairs, holding her hand out to him. “I’m not a virgin,” she warned, but did not add that she had only made love twice before, and both attempts had been fumbling, her partner—the same man both times—as inexperienced as she.
“It isn’t important,” he said, his words like music to her. “Your fulfillment is all that matters.”
She paused halfway down the flight. “I don’t... I haven’t... if there is such a spasm as I have been told of, I ... ”
His gaze was mesmerizing. “Then you have something to discover.”
“Perhaps,” she allowed dubiously as she continued down to the corridor below, then turned toward the back of the house. For a moment it seemed to her that the distance to her bedroom was vast and impossible to cross as the deserts of Arabia. Then she began to walk toward it, and in a few steps was through the door.
The afternoon light did not touch the windows, giving the room a luminous dusk; the sheets were opalescent as Rowena tossed back the covers. She did her best not to think, afraid that if she permitted herself a rational second or two, she would not be able to open herself to what Ragoczy offered. She nearly froze as he came up behind her and put his arms around her, his hands coming to rest over her breasts; she held her breath as he bent and kissed the nape of her neck just above the clasp of the necklace he had made for her. “Count,” she whispered.
He had removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a grandmother’s chair; the silk of his shirt was enticing as she touched his arms, as much to keep his hands where they were as to stop him. “Rowena.”
They stood together, unmoving, for the greater part of two minutes, then Rowena turned in his embrace, seeking his mouth with her own as her senses grew more acute in answer to her longing. At last she moved enough to reach the underarm closure of her dress. “I should get out of this.”
He said nothing, but the tenderness in his dark eyes made the breath catch in her throat. It had not struck her until now how awkward it was to unfasten the hooks and eyes concealed under the seam. She felt graceless as she struggled with them, her fingers clumsy with need and impatience. Then she felt, more than saw, Ragoczy take over the task. A moment later he helped tug the dress up and off her, leaving her in her satin slip and half-corset. She pulled the slip up and flung it away
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as soon as it was clear of her head. There were the laces and hooks of the corset; she wanted to scream with vexation until Ragoczy gently began to loosen the laces for her. It took only a few seconds before she was able to cast away the restricting undergarment, leaving her naked to the waist.
“Shall I take these off?” She indicated her pale silk drawers with the garterbelt over it, holding up her silk stockings.
“When you are ready,” he said, drawing her into his arms, beginning light kisses on her brow, her closed eyes, the comer of her mouth as his hands sought out the beginning of her gratification; his ardor so precisely matched her own that she quivered in anticipation, dawning hope filling her that she might at last experience what she had only read of before and had supposed was a romantic fiction.
“What are you doing?” she whispered as his tongue touched her breast; the nipple was suddenly sensitive and erect.
“Something to please you,” he answered as his hand cupped her other breast, awakening new responses.
“Not here,” she murmured, stepping out of her shoes at last, and bending to remove her stockings, garters and drawers. She faltered, half-inclined to hide in her covers, half-preening as she saw how he looked at her. Never had she stood naked in front of a man before; never had she thought of her body in anything but pragmatic terms. She raised her arms slowly, then languorously and deliberately fell back across her sheets. “This is better.”
He had cast aside his tie and waistcoat, but he removed no other clothing but his thick-soled shoes. As he stretched out beside her, he saw the bewilderment in her face. “This is for you, Rowena.”
“But you—” She did not know how to go on.
“Never fear; if you are fulfilled, I will be also.” His hands moved down over her hips and thighs, tantalizing and reassuring at once.
This was nothing like her two previous encounters with Clive Wash-bourne, when everything was hurried and disappointing: this was glorious turmoil of flesh and feeling that caught her unaware, a revelation she had not considered herself capable of achieving.
At the first persuasive movement of his fingers between her legs, she sighed, certain now that all the lovely evocations would quickly end; Clive had plunged into her as soon as he had tugged her drawers off. But Ragoczy continued his ministrations without haste, with no indication that he intended to climb atop her; his hands gave exquisite attention to every nuance of voluptuousness. When she was convinced
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that no greater ecstasy was possible, she lay back; he startled her afresh by moving down her body to taste the sea-shell-scented folds. “Count?”
He raised his head. “Do you dislike it?” he asked softly.
“. . . No,” she told him.
“Then I will continue.” He bent his head once more, finding the hidden place that trembled and jumped.
Passion gathered in Rowena, coiling like a spring; when the release came it went through her like storm-driven waves, tremendous and rapturous at once, so engulfing that she no longer noticed the texture of the sheets and coverlets beneath her, or heard her own soft cries. Gradually she realized Ragoczy was holding her, his lips pressed to the curve of her neck. Flushed with elation, she sank her hands in the loose waves of his hair. Now she felt the buttons of his shirt against her skin. As he lifted his head, she beamed at him. “Oh, Count. Thank you.”
He kissed her softly. “It is I who should thank you,” he told her with utter sincerity.
“No,” she insisted. “You had nothing for yourself.”
He put his finger to her lips. “Oh, yes, Rowena,” he said gently but in a tone that stopped all argument, “I had all that you had.”
“But—” She rolled onto her side in order to face him, preparing to ask something that now seemed impossible to speak aloud.
“Those of my blood . . . only receive what we give.” He waited for her to consider what he told her.
“But. . . how?” she asked, adding, her voice becoming teasing, “Not that I disapprove. But why?”
“That is our nature.” His smile was loving, but tinged by irony. “Your fulfillment is my own.”
“If that is true, then I am thrilled,” she said, taking his hand and putt
ing it over her breast again. Now that she had discovered the richness of her passion, her own boldness was no longer confusing to her. “Can you feel how much?”
His dark eyes were luminous in the fading light of the ending day. “Better than you know.”
Questions rose in her mind, but her lingering delight kept her from asking them. She kissed him soundly. “In that case,” she said, happiness coursing through her as her orgasm had, “this portrait may take a very long time to complete.”
His laughter surprised them both. “As long as it brings you pleasure, so be it,” he declared, and wrapped her in his arms again. “You have done more than I can tell you, Rowena.”
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Again she set aside her questions, although she knew that they would persist long after this apolaustic glow “Its useless to begin today; I wouldn’t be able to hold any concentration at all.” Her expression was mischievous. “Tomorrow, perhaps? At the same time?”
Her offer was tempting, but he was not willing to risk taking blood from her again so soon. “The day after, if you please.” He reached behind him and tugged on the edge of the coverlet, pulling it over them both.
“Are you cold?” she wondered aloud; the movement of the air sent chills over her, leaving a trail of gooseflesh.
“No; but you are,” he answered.
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