by Mary Balogh
Her love for him.
She held him with her arms and legs, all his hard-muscled magnificence, and moved against him, twisting her hips and her shoulders, drawing on him with inner muscles, feeling him hard and deep, wanting him and wanting him, and keeping her teeth firmly clamped so that she would say nothing. He had not moved.
“Does that feel pleasurable?” she asked him in a whisper. “Does it, Robert?”
“Yes.” He braced himself on his elbows, and his face was above hers suddenly, his blue eyes gazing down into hers, expressionless. But she could see deeper than his eyes and she knew that he spoke the truth.
“Give me pleasure too,” she said. “I want to be pleasured too, Robert.”
“Like this?” He withdrew very slowly and reentered as slowly. “Does that give you pleasure?”
“Yes,” she said, and he did it again, his eyes holding hers, and once more.
She wanted his mouth on hers. There was nothing more intimate than what they were doing. But the meeting of mouths brought the closeness of love. She wanted his mouth on hers, his tongue inside. But of course this was to be an experience without love. This was about intimacy and not closeness. About sex and not love.
She moved her hips again so that together they set up a slow rhythm.
“It is good?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“It is very good,” she said. “You are larger than most men, Robert?”
“You should know,” he said. “Is the ground hard? Would you prefer to come on top?”
“No.” The ache of her need was in her throat. She closed her eyes. He would surely know the truth if he continued to look into them. How could he not know the truth? Was it possible to do this—this, in just this way—only for physical pleasure? Perhaps it was for a man. Perhaps it was for some women. But not for her. She could not do this purely for pleasure. She could do it only for duty—though when it had been duty she had been able to stomach it only six times—or for love.
Did he not know that? And that she owed him no duty at all?
And was it not so for him? Was it always like this with his whores? With Beatriz?
“Is it like this for you with Beatriz?” Her eyes flew open and she found herself looking up into his again. “Is it as pleasurable with her?”
“Have done, Joana,” he said. “Hush.” And he lowered his weight onto her again, reached down with his hands to cup her buttocks as he had early that morning so that she would not feel the hardness of the ground, and built the rhythm of their loving to a faster speed.
She thought she would surely go mad. It took him forever to finish. Not that she had any complaint about that. She wished they could be joined forever. But he would not allow her her pleasure. When she felt it coming, recognizing the signs from the night before, and knew as she had not the night before what glory, what peace awaited her, he must have felt it too and stroked her more shallowly so that though she twisted and pushed against him, she could not bring him to the core of her aching, to the center of her being.
And so despite everything she was losing this particular round of their struggle. She had to bite down on both lips not to whimper and plead. And he knew it. He was using an expertise she could not compete with. He was playing with her as one would play with an opponent one was absolutely sure of defeating. She could not fight him, not even the hopeless fight she had fought with him before. For she could not play mind games with him when her body was crying out its love and its need to be loved.
“Now, Joana!” he ordered against her ear, though he might as well have spoken Greek for the amount she understood the words. But she understood the language of his body. He had slowed and deepened, and then he drove urgently into her so that she shouted out and came against him with a shattering force that obliterated all thought and even consciousness for endless moments.
She was lying on her back, gazing up at tree trunks and branches. The warm air of evening was cool against her bare skin. Her cheek was close to a shoulder that radiated heat and that drew her like a magnet. She rubbed her cheek against it, and the shattered pieces of her mind came together again.
“Thank you, Robert,” she said. “That was indeed pleasurable.”
“What the devil did you mean,” he asked, “mentioning Beatriz in the middle of all that? Do you have no sense of decorum whatsoever? And what about all your lovers? Do I measure up against them?”
“Very favorably,” she said, closing her eyes. “Very favorably indeed, Robert. I think you may have spoiled me for them all.”
“Well,” he said, “Leroux and countless dozens of the others can give you a fortune and a lifetime of luxury as well as a damned good time in bed, Joana. I do not believe you will pine for me for long.”
“I never pine,” she said. “Except once. That was before I learned to cope with life.”
“Was there ever such a time?” he asked.
“People laugh at the love between children,” she said. “They call it puppy love, just as if it is not love at all but something merely to cause amusement. I believe it is the best love, the only love. It is pure and innocent and all-consuming. I would never belittle such love.”
He had turned his head to look at her. She was staring across his chest to the trees beyond him.
“He was beautiful,” she said. “He was seventeen years old, but very grown-up to my fifteen-year-old eyes. He was the first man I danced with, the first man I kissed. He was the first to touch me.” She smiled dreamily. “He touched my breast and I felt sinful and wonderful. I loved him totally and passionately, Robert—he was that other Robert I told you about. I vowed that I would love him always, that I would never marry anyone but him.”
“And yet,” he said after a short silence, “you have loved countless others and married someone else.”
“For political reasons,” she said. “And no, I have never loved anyone as I loved him.” Except you, she thought, the thought sweeping at her, and she turned her head into his shoulder and closed her eyes. “It lasted for only a few days before my father caught me—he was ineligible, you know—and took me away. But I pined for him for months. Foolish, was it not, as the age of fifteen?”
“Yes,” he said. “Foolish.”
“But it was not foolish,” she said. “He was the one beautiful thing in my life, my Robert. But he died. When Papa wanted to take me back to France, I did not want to go. And perhaps he guessed the reason why. So he told me what he would otherwise have kept from me—my Robert died of smallpox only six weeks after I left him.”
“Did he?” he asked after a pause.
“I thought I would die too,” she said. “Is that not foolish? Are not young people foolish to believe that a broken heart can kill? Instead I went back to France with Papa and I learned that I am beautiful and attractive—I am, am I not? And I learned how to keep men at bay so that I would not have to experience that pain again. Love is painful, Robert.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I just wish . . .” she said.
“What?”
“I just wish,” she said, “that I had not believed the lies my father told me about him. I did not for very long, but it was too late when I admitted to myself that my Robert would never have boasted about me to the servants and called me a French bitch. You might call me that, Robert, but he would not have. He was a gentleman despite his birth. And I taunted him with his birth because my own feelings had been shattered. I think I hurt him. There was hurt in his eyes when I left him.”
She heard him swallow.
“You see?” She smiled against his arm. “I was human once too, Robert. I loved. You would not think me capable of love, would you? But then, of course, I was only fifteen years old. It was only puppy love. Not the real thing at all. Rather amusing really. But you remind me of him. Is that not absurd? He was a tall and slender boy, an
d gentle. He hated the thought of having to kill, once his father bought him his commission. Nothing like you at all. And yet you remind me of him. Perhaps he would have matured into a man like you, had he lived. Perhaps not. I suppose it is as well I will never know.”
“We must dress, Joana,” he said, “and then sleep. I would not like to have to get up in a hurry dressed as I am now.”
She did not want to move. She felt a deep grief, as if time had just rolled back eleven years. “There,” she said, dashing a hand over her eyes to wipe away a spilled-over tear, “my memories are reducing me to a watering pot. Have you ever known anything more ridiculous?”
He sat up suddenly and linked his arms about his spread knees. She felt bereft and very lonely and frightened by her feelings. Normally she guarded herself carefully against any vulnerability. The most negative of emotions she would allow herself normally was boredom.
“There is nothing ridiculous about it,” he said. “It is quite natural, I think, at times to crave the innocence and joy of childhood and youth. And to grieve for their loss. There is nothing foolish about your story, Joana.”
She felt warmed again, reassured. And her love for him was almost a tangible thing. She stretched out a hand and would have touched his side, but she did not do so. He would have misunderstood. He would have thought she was asking for pleasure again. He would have thought it a purely physical gesture.
“Get dressed,” he said, and began to pull his own clothes back on. “You would not wish to be found like that, Joana, even by your French lover. He has a whole company of men with him.”
He might as well have told her to get dressed and slapped her face to hasten her along, Joana thought ruefully as she drew her dress toward her. His words were more painful than a slap. Her French lover? Did he not have that extra sense that she had? Did he not know that she had no lover but him? That there could be no one but him now?
Apparently not. And it seemed that her second love was destined to bring her as much grief as the first.
“Actually,” she said, “it would not bother me, Robert. I am quite accustomed to being gazed at naked by all the men who desire me—though usually one at a time, I must admit. But I would hate to see you blush. Will you let me have my gun if Marcel and his company of men come up with us? You will be horribly outnumbered. Perhaps I can kill a few for you.”
“Forget it, Joana,” he said. “I will be giving you a great deal of pleasure during the coming days and nights—according to your decision. But I will not give you the pleasure of killing me, I do assure you.”
“Then I shall kill Marcel instead,” she said. “I am tired of him and he is not as good a lover as you, Robert. Not nearly. I shall kill him for you, and all his men will go running back to the safety of Spain and the waiting arms of the partisans.”
“Lie down,” he said. “I want to be on our way by dawn, and this has been a long day. How is your heel?”
“Sore,” she said. “You must give me a bullet to bite upon during tomorrow’s march, Robert. Are you going to hold me imprisoned in your arms with your leg thrown across mine as you did last night?”
“Yes,” he said. “Lie down.”
“You know, Robert,” she said, obeying him and wriggling against him to find a comfortable position while his arms came about her and one leg came over hers, “I could grow quite comfortable with being a prisoner. Do you think Arthur will appoint you my guard? But you are going to have to let me up again.”
“Forget it,” he said.
“You did not allow me my five minutes of privacy,” she said. “I am afraid I need them.”
He swore and released his hold on her. “Five!” he said. “Not one second longer.”
“Robert.” She laughed lightly as she got to her feet. “You really should not have said that. Now you must realize that I will have to be away for six minutes. Oh, yes, and for one second longer than that too.” She whisked herself off through the trees. What a delight it was to tease him, she thought. And she felt almost guilty, considering all the circumstances she might have enumerated in her mind, to be feeling so wonderfully happy.
20
HE was not sure at first what had woken him. But whatever it was had woken Joana too. She stiffened in his arms, and he set three warning fingers over her lips.
“Sh,” he murmured against her ear.
But it had not been voices or the sound of footsteps or hooves. He knew that as soon as full consciousness returned.
“What was it?” she breathed against his fingers. “The earth shook.”
“An explosion,” he said. “A great one. Quite a long way off, I think. It must be Almeida.”
“Shelling?” she asked.
He frowned. “It was just one big boom,” he said. “It would be continuing if it were shelling. Come on. It’s time we were on our way.”
It was not quite dawn and he had planned during the hour or so after their second loving—when he had lain awake thinking about her and about himself, about them as they had been eleven years before and as they were now—he had planned to have her again before they set out on their way to find Almeida and to find food. The best way to quell his disturbing thoughts, he had decided, was to take her again and again and again for his pleasure, to use her as the whore she was. A high-class whore who did not take money for what she did, but a whore nevertheless.
But there was no thought now to delaying for pleasure. God, the earth had shaken. Whatever it was, it had been one hell of an explosion.
Joana was rolling her blanket and pointedly leaving his for him to roll. She might have agreed to be his sex partner for as long as they were together, he thought with a grim smile directed at himself, but she was not going to play the part of his woman. He could expect no favors from Joana other than the sexual. And even in that she demanded as many favors as she gave.
God, but she was wonderful to make love with, he thought, bending to roll his blanket and turning to lift his weapons into place on his shoulder. He had to use all his willpower when having sex with her not to lose himself in emotion, not to be murmuring sweet nothings in her ear, not to be wooing her with his hands and his mouth and his body instead of merely concentrating on pleasure given and received.
Wouldn’t she just love that? he thought, straightening up and looking to see if she was ready to go. Wouldn’t she love to know how very close she was to having total power over him? Fortunately she would never know. He would die rather than give any part of his inner self to such a woman—or to any woman, for that matter.
Though she had really loved him at the age of fifteen, he thought suddenly, and the thought almost weakened him as it had very nearly done the evening before. She had spoken those words to him all those years ago out of hurt, because she had thought that he had hurt her. But she had since recognized the fact that her father had lied to her over that incident without in any way suspecting that he had lied to her about the other too. She had been told that Robert was dead—because she had been pining for him. But that had all happened a long, long time ago, during another lifetime.
“Ready?” he asked. “How is the heel?”
“It is all right,” she said. “I shall keep the strap down. I shall not slow you down, Robert, or ask to be carried. And if I feel the need to scream, I shall bite down on my lower lip until it is raw.”
She smiled that dazzling, teasing smile that could make his heart somersault inside him. And it was true, he knew. She had boundless courage. She had to have in order to be a French spy. But now he knew that she had physical courage too. She had not once complained the day before about the heat or the dust or about hunger or the deliberately killing pace he had set. She had not once lagged behind. He felt an unwilling admiration for her.
“Let’s go, then,” he said. But the words were no sooner out of his mouth than he reached for her, whirling her around so that her back
was against him, and clamped one hand hard over her mouth. “Hush!” he whispered harshly.
This time the sound was definitely that of horses’ hooves, and many of them. And voices. He pushed Joana to the ground and came down beside her. He hooked one leg over hers and kept his hand over her mouth. He shrugged the guns off his shoulder until they were lying on the ground beside him.
He would not have a hope in hell, he thought, if they were seen. But at least he would take two Frenchmen down with him if he was to go, one with the rifle and one with the musket. And if he were fortunate, perhaps one or even two with the knife or his sword if he had a chance to draw it.
Someone cursed in French. “We were camped just a mile or so away without even realizing that this was here,” the same voice said.
“All right,” Colonel Leroux said. “Give the order for the men to drink and water their horses. Ten minutes. That explosion must have come from Almeida. The bastards must have been blown to glory.”
“Ney will be inside the walls by now?” the first voice asked. “Lucky dog. Plunder and wine . . .”
“And women,” the colonel said. “Women by the dozens while they live. Give that order. We must move on. They came this way, I am certain of it. Probably heading for the safety of Almeida.”
The first man sniggered and turned to give the order to fall out.
Captain Blake was easing a handkerchief from his pocket. He lifted himself half over Joana and brought down his weight on her. He set his mouth to her ear.
“Not a sound or a movement,” he murmured, “or you may be the first to go.” And he folded the handkerchief into a thick strip, covered her mouth with it, and tied the ends firmly at the back of her head. His hand went beneath her to unbuckle her belt. He brought her hands one at a time to her back and bound them firmly with the leather band. And he moved off her again, keeping one leg across hers. She had not struggled at all, he thought in some surprise.
