Nights Of Fire

by Laura Leone

  "I'm so glad you're here," she said. "I've been so worried."

  "I want you to go away," he said, pushing her knees apart as he spoke.

  Her heart contracted. "What?"

  "Leave," he said.

  "No!"

  "It's too dangerous for you here."

  She felt him, hot and eager, pushing into her. "I don't want to talk right now." She lifted her hips, her body starving for him.

  "There's danger."

  He was filling her now. So thick and hard. God, it was glorious. She had missed this so much!

  "You're in danger," he whispered, his breath hot against her throat as he surged powerfully inside her.

  "No, not now," she whimpered, wanting him, wanting this. "Please, not now."

  He thrust rhythmically into her, the intimate friction flooding her with pleasure. His strong, beautiful back arched as he pumped his hips in slow, deep strokes. Somehow she could see this, even though it was dark and she was underneath him— see the animal grace of his arching spine and the tautly pulsing muscles of his buttocks as he gave her what she craved.

  Oh, yes...

  He suddenly stopped.

  "Don't stop," she begged.

  His whole body was rigid atop her writhing, needy one. He lifted his head, listening to something. "It's not safe," he whispered.

  "Please," she urged, clutching his buttocks and trying to move her hips against his. "I've wanted this every night since you left. Every day, too."

  "No, someone's here."

  And then he was melting away from her.

  "No, don't go! No!"

  Damn, damn, damn.

  "Someone's here," he repeated from the shadows.

  "I don't care!" She lay ravished and abandoned, her flesh aching for him, and felt reckless in her arousal. "Come back, mon amour. Don't go..." She tried to follow him, but she couldn't move, couldn't make her body do her will.

  "You're in danger."

  "Paul, please. Don't make me..."

  He was gone.

  "...wake up."

  Someone's here.

  She drew in a sharp breath and opened her eyes, her heart thundering with a sudden burst of fear.

  It was dark. Very dark. Only a faint streak of moonlight illuminated her bedroom. She lay on her stomach. Her legs were spread, her back arched as if she'd been pressing her hips down into the mattress in response to her dream. Her hands clutched her pillow in frustrated passion. Her body was throbbing as if Paul really had been there and stopped right in the middle of making love to her.

  She would lament the loss of that promising dream almost as much as she usually lamented his actual absence... except that he'd been right.

  Someone was here.

  In her cottage. In the middle of the night. Creeping furtively towards the bedroom where she slept alone and helpless.

  Gabrielle couldn't move. For a moment, she felt so helplessly immobile that she thought she was still dreaming. But then she was able to wriggle her fingers, and she realized the brief paralysis was the result of her sudden transition from dream-rich sleep into the wakeful, bone-chilling terror of hearing an intruder in her home.

  Don't panic, she told herself.

  Her heart was pounding so thunderously that it frustrated her further attempts to hear the prowler. Had she imagined that furtive footstep in the main room of her humble stone cottage?

  She closed her eyes again and concentrated on listening, feigning sleep as she lay tensely on her stomach with her head turned away from the bedroom door.

  Her heart nearly stopped when she heard it: a slight creak in the wooden floor as someone approached her bedroom.

  Her most persistent fear sired her next thought: Had the Nazis found out she was in the Resistance?

  No, she realized immediately, that didn't make sense. Half a dozen of them would break down her door and stampede into the cottage shouting. They ruled France and could do whatever they pleased if they found out about her. They weren't furtive when they murdered civilians or hauled them away to concentration camps. And they particularly liked to make a noisy show of killing or arresting Resistance members. No, it wasn't the Nazis creeping towards her bedroom in the middle of the night.

  Someone else then. She knew that Paul suspected there was a traitor in her Resistance cadre. Was this prowler the traitor, sneaking up to murder her in her sleep?

  Be ready.

  Or perhaps the intruder was a rapist? Some violent pig who thought a woman living alone was an easy target. Though her cottage was in Caen, it was rather isolated for a town dwelling, standing alone at the edge of an old abbey's grounds on the outskirts of the city.

  Her mouth was dry with fear as she released her tormented grip on the pillow and slid her hand underneath it.

  Panic almost claimed her when her fingers didn't immediately encounter what she sought; but then she found it.

  The knife.

  The blade was encased in its old leather sheathe so that she wouldn't inadvertently injure herself in her sleep. She started to tug at the handle and felt the whole sheathe move.

  Damn.

  She heard him cross the threshold of her bedroom. She had only moments left. Intending to take him by surprise, she kept her body still, but pressed her cheek hard into the pillow to hold the leather sheathe beneath it in place while she withdrew the sharp blade it shielded.

  He approached the bed without pausing or stumbling in the dark. She wished that, for once, she hadn't been tidy. For once, why couldn't she have left a pile of clothes and shoes lying on the bedroom floor? But, no, there was nothing there to trip him or slow his progress to her bed.

  She could have wept with relief when she felt the knife slide out of the sheathe. She sighed and shifted a bit to cover her movement as she took the weapon in a backward grip, good for slashing or for stabbing after delivering a punch.

  She could feel his presence now, looking down at her in the dark, looming over the bed. What was he planning? What did he intend?

  She listened for any sound that would tell her he had a gun, but she heard nothing. Not even the sound of his breathing, in fact. Just silence, as he gazed down at her and she waited for him to move. She would strike when he was off balance, catching him off guard as he—

  It happened. She felt him put one knee on the bed, and then start shifting his weight as he leaned down to touch her.

  Now!

  She screeched like all the damned in hell as she simultaneously leapt up and drove her fist—the one gripping the knife hilt—into his face.

  "Yaggggh!"

  "Argh!"

  His reflexes were good. She barely clipped his cheek before he threw himself backwards, out of her reach. Her adrenaline-fueled body was already leaping after him of its own volition when instinct alerted her to her mistake.

  "Don't!" he shouted as the faint streak of moonlight piercing the dark room glinted off the blade of the raised knife. "It's me!"

  She stared at his defensive shape in the shadows, stunned beyond coherent speech, and pumped with mingled terror, aggression, and horror at what she had almost done. She tried to speak, but all that came out of her mouth was, "Agh!"

  "What are you doing?" he demanded in English. Though American, he almost always spoke French with her. Not right now, though.

  She was panting, her head spinning with this sudden shift of reality. "Paul?" she said incredulously.

  "Have you lost your mind?"

  She just kept panting and staring at him. "Paul..."

  She couldn't see his face, but when he spoke, he sounded as if he were addressing a dangerous dog. "Put down the knife, Gabrielle."

  "What are you... When did you..." she asked incoherently in French. She could speak English well under normal circumstances, but certainly not right now. She stared at his dark shape in dazed bewilderment, feeling dizzy.

  "The knife, Gabrielle," he prodded, switching to French.

  "Huh? Oh." She realized she was still poised for att
ack and holding the knife as if she meant to use it on him. Pulling herself together, she slowly lowered it, almost feeling as if her right arm didn't belong to her anymore. "Sorry."

  "Sorry? Sorry!" he sputtered. "You nearly kill me, and you're sorry?"

  He sounded a little upset. Gabrielle felt numb with shock.

  I nearly made myself a widow.

  She didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until he snapped, "Damned right, you almost made yourself a widow! What the hell is going on?"

  "You're... mad," she guessed, her mind operating slowly.

  "Me? You're the one who just tried to stab me! What's wrong with you?" He stomped across the room and fumbled for the box of matches she kept on the dresser. "I come home to my new bride, and as soon as I try to get into bed with her, she pulls a knife on me! What did I do to deserve that?"

  She raised a hand to shield her eyes as the lantern blazed to life. "I thought you were a prowler."

  Now that they could see each other, he studied her incredulously from across the little room. "You're sleeping with a knife now?"

  "Yes." Some feeling was starting to return to her limbs.

  Paul!

  Heat flooded her heart.

  "You're back," she said in wonder.

  "When," he persisted, "did you start sleeping with a knife?"

  "I, uh..." She looked at the knife in her hand and frowned. "A few nights ago... Last week?" She shrugged. "Sometime after you left."

  "For God's sake, Gabrielle, why?"

  His irritation was starting to irritate her. As her stunned mind began functioning again, she replied, "Why? Because I'm here alone every night, that's why!"

  He frowned now, starting to look concerned. "Has something happened?"

  "Yes," she snapped. "I got married two weeks ago and have slept alone more often since the wedding than I did when I was single!"

  "And just how does a knife replace me in bed?" he snapped back. A moment later he winced and said, "What I meant was—"

  "I used to sleep with a knife before we met. This cottage is isolated, no one would know if something happened and I needed help. No one would hear if I screamed. And any German soldier who came here to force himself on me would probably be safe from the law." She gestured emphatically with the knife. "But he wouldn't be safe from me."

  Paul's shoulders sagged and his expression changed. "Sweetheart..." He started to cross the room towards her.

  "Two weeks!" Anger flooded her blood in place of the shock she'd felt moments ago. She waved the knife at him. He stopped abruptly and watched her warily. "You've been gone two weeks! No word, no nothing! I didn't know if you were dead, or still in France, or were ever coming back!"

  "Of course I was coming back," he said. "I'm your husband."

  "We haven't even had a wedding night!" she raged.

  "We've had plenty of them," he reminded her. "We just didn't happen to be married at the time."

  "You know what I mean!" she shrieked. He'd left Caen barely an hour after the brief, secret ceremony wherein they'd become husband and wife.

  "I'm sorry about that," he said sheepishly. "It was an emergency. I had no choice."

  She knew that. At the time, she had understood. He was an undercover agent for the Office of Strategic Services, posing as a bankrupt French wine merchant from Paris. His secretive work took him all over Normandy and Brittany, where he liaised with various Resistance groups, spied on German fortifications and troop movements, relayed information to his superiors, and received new instructions.

  "And I told you so," Paul added, recklessly using the words which no husband should ever use. "I told you that afternoon that I'd have to leave as soon as it got dark. I said we could postpone the wedding until I got back. I left it up to you. And you said—"

  "You're making me very sorry I said I'd marry you at all!"

  He sighed. The look of exaggerated patience on his face enraged her.

  "Where have you been?" she demanded.

  "You know I won't tell you."

  He kept so many things secret to keep her safe. Even their relationship was secret. Oh, they couldn't hide the fact that there was something between them, but they pretended to most people that it was casual. Only two members of the Resistance and the priest who had performed the service knew about their marriage.

  "But while I was away," he added, "I did tell the OSS about us."

  "That you married me?"

  "Yes."

  They'd wanted to be married, to belong to each other, to be husband and wife. And Paul had wanted to ensure that if he got captured or killed, she'd be taken care of by the American government. That she could even go to America if the Nazis weren't driven out of France. She and any child of his which she might have conceived.

  "This is the longest you've been gone since you first came to Caen," she said accusingly, even though the rational part of her mind—which felt very remote at this moment—knew he'd have returned to her sooner if he could.

  "I know." His expression softened. "I'm sorry."

  "Do you have any idea how worried I was?"

  "Yes," he replied, "I do."

  Of course he did. She knew he worried just as much about her. He often begged her to leave France, or at least to go south to stay with her relatives in a remote village in the Pyrenees where she'd be safer than she was here.

  She sighed shakily and turned away, suddenly sad. God, how she hated this war. It was so cruel to lovers. So vicious to newlyweds. Gabrielle immediately felt a wave of guilt about her self-pity, when she knew that millions of people were suffering as much as or more than she and Paul.

  "Agh!" Lost in her thoughts, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt his hand on her shoulder.

  He leapt back as she spun around to face him. "Jesus, what's wrong with you?"

  "What do you think is 'wrong' with me? You scared me to death, creeping up on me in the dark while I slept! What on earth were you thinking?"

  "Give me the knife," he said with sudden determination.

  "What?" She vaguely realized she was still holding it—and waving it around with reckless emotionalism. "Oh."

  He advanced cautiously. "The knife, Gabrielle."

  "How do you think any woman would respond to the sound—"

  "Most probably wouldn't pull a knife on their husbands—"

  "—of an intruder in the middle of the night—"

  "—and I've been coming here in the middle of the night—"

  "—when she's alone and helpless?"

  "—for months."

  He seized her right forearm in a strong grip, then carefully removed the knife from her grasp. She was surprised at how hard it was to let go. She'd really been scared.

  "You've never been helpless, my love," he said with a grin.

  She was shaking. "You shouldn't have frightened me like that."

  "I'm sorry." He put the knife on the dresser.

  "Stop saying that!"

  He looked a little exasperated. "It never occurred to me you'd be scared. I thought you knew the sound of my footsteps by now, even in your sleep." In keeping with their pretense that their affair was casual, he still officially lived in a shack behind Café Didier in the city center; but he secretly slept here as many nights as he could. "I've come here before when you were asleep, and you've never been afraid."

  "I was expecting you all those other times!"

  "But you knew I'd be back."

  "I didn't know when!" She shivered and hugged herself. "And I was afraid it might be never. Two weeks, Paul. I was so afraid something had happened to you this time."

  "Hey, don't hug yourself," he murmured. "Hug me."

  She tried to relax as his arms came around her. It didn't work. "I've been, uh... pretty tense, I guess."

  He was big, warm, strong, and he smelled of night air and summer wind. Her heart was still pounding so hard, its drumming in her head loudly punctuated every word he spoke.

  "I'm sorr... Um. I mean," he amen
ded, rubbing his cheek against her hair as he held her, "I didn't think. I just... wanted to surprise you."

  "You did," she said sourly.

  She felt the puff of his breath against her cheek. "I feel bad, chérie. A secret ceremony. A secret marriage. No honeymoon. No wedding night." He kissed her neck. "Are you filing for an annulment?"

  "No, as you can see, I thought I'd just murder you, instead."

  His arms tightened around her and he kissed her mouth, seeking a response. He paused after a moment and said, "You are tense."

  "What did you expect, sneaking up on me like that?" she grumbled.

  "I was sort of hoping for a warm welcome from my eager bride." His hands slid caressingly along her back, trying to soothe her through the cotton fabric of her nightgown.

  "Which you'd have gotten if you hadn't scared me so much!"

  "Maybe we can still save the evening," he suggested.

  She stiffened, remembering. "In fact..."

  "Yes?"

  "I was dreaming about you."

  "Yeah?" He sounded pleased.

  "Yes." She still felt stiff and jumpy in his embrace. "We were making love, and I was telling you how much I'd missed you and wanted you every day since you left—"

  "This sounds good."

  "And then you stopped," she said sourly.

  "How very unlike me."

  "Because you heard someone entering the house and wanted me to wake up and defend myself."

  He snorted. "Okay, that's eerie. Me warning you about me."

  She smiled, finally starting to relax. "Yes."

  "It's a good thing I came back in time to save you from your own subconscious."

  "I'm so glad you're back."

  "And you're probably really sorry you tried to stab me," he prodded.

  "Maybe a little."

  "You're a hard woman." He whispered, "And I'm getting to be a hard man." He snuggled her pelvis into his own to prove his point.

  "Paul..." Suddenly desperate to make sure that this wasn't another dream, that he was really here and alive and whole, she flung her arms around him in a burst of exuberance—and smashed her forehead into his nose.

  "Ow!"

  "Sorry!"