He lifted his mouth from hers, shifting to slide under the sheets beside her, and she nestled close to him and sighed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She raised a hand to stroke it over his chest, and around his shoulders. “This is...so nice. Being together again, like this.”
“I’ll try to make it that way,” he promised. His hand shaped her hip, found her thigh and returned to her waist, her midriff, the yielding firmness of her breasts.
This time he deliberately made the pace slow, languorous, paying attention to every part of her body in turn, keeping his kisses light at first, only allowing them to deepen gradually, attuned to her quickened breathing, the small, gasping sounds that she made, the way her lips parted in invitation, and her body moved under his ministrations.
She knew he was holding back—holding her back, too—determined to make this time different, an unhurried building of exquisite sensation, a progression of delight from one plane to another, and to another.
Perhaps it didn’t last quite as long as he’d intended, because there came a point when their mutual impatience overcame every intention, and they melded together in an equally blinding, intense and eventually shattering climax.
The aftermath this time was even more enervating, and when they had reluctantly parted, Jade simply turned her head against his shoulder, laid her hand on his warm chest, and fell asleep.
* * *
She woke feeling cold, and discovered that Magnus had turned in his sleep and taken the blanket with him, leaving her with barely half the sheet. She shivered, and smiled at his oblivious back, carefully retrieved some of the blanket and moved close to him, fitting her body against the contours of his. Softly, she danced small kisses along the line of his shoulder, and insinuated her arm about his waist, her fingers floating against his skin.
She knew by the change in his breathing that he’d awakened, but when he turned suddenly, his arms going about her, he had his eyes closed. He lay still for a few moments, and then said, “Tell me I’m not dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming,” she said, and gently bit his earlobe.
“Dreams lie,” he said strangely, his voice husky and slurred, and Jade thought that he was, after all, half-asleep.
“I’m not a dream,” she assured him. “And I’m not lying.”
She kissed his closed eyelids, and they didn’t open. She touched his mouth with her hand, loving the masculine contours of it, and then pressed her lips to his, coaxing them open.
He turned on his back, bringing her with him, still kissing. His hand came up to massage her nape, tugging a little at her hair. She shifted her legs, straddling one of his, and he ran a hand over her from shoulder to knee and then up to hold her more firmly against him, setting her blood pounding.
He turned further, so that they lay on their sides, and their mouths broke apart, and she saw his eyes open at last, his gaze locked to hers. Then he moved again and she was on her back, looking up at him as he lay poised over her. He lowered his head to her mouth, and just before their lips met he said something else, under his breath. It sounded like, “You’re a liar, but not a dream.”
She couldn’t have heard right, or else he was still not fully awake. Although his body was telling her that it needed no more arousing. Aroused herself by the unmistakable evidence of his virility, she made an inviting movement against him with her hips, and he surfaced from the kiss, gasping. “If you do that again,” he said, his eyes brilliant and dark, “I won’t be answerable for the consequences.”
“Oh?” She directed a distinctly brazen look at him, and very deliberately did it again.
A harsh sound escaped his throat. “Jade—”
“Magnus?” She stared boldly into his eyes.
“You want me again?” he demanded. “So quickly?”
“I want you,” she confirmed. “Again. Quickly. Now.”
He took a great, audible breath, adjusted his legs between hers and obliged, surely and deeply.
Jade’s head went back on the pillow, her lips parted in a sigh of relief and pleasure. “Thank you, Magnus. I love you.”
His eyes were blazing. Their bodies were moving in unison, singing ancient songs of joy. “I love you!” He sounded as though the words were torn from him. “Nothing else matters!”
* * *
They got up late and lingered over breakfast, Jade wearing only her green robe over a pair of panties, Magnus dressed in a casual shirt and trousers.
Jade nibbled dreamily at fruit and toast, watching Magnus eat bacon and eggs washed down with coffee. She’d got up to cook them for him while he showered.
She loved the sure movements of his hands, the way his throat rose from the collar of his shirt, the dark crescent of his lashes lying on his cheek as he lifted his cup and finished off the coffee.
“I’ll pour you some more,” she offered, getting up.
“No.” He retained his hold on the cup as he placed it on the table. “I’ve had enough.” He was looking at her in a way that made her uneasy, as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him.
Magnus shook his head. “What could be the matter,” he said, “after last night? And this morning.”
Perhaps she imagined the note of irony in his tone. He held her eyes for a moment, a strangely set smile on his face, and then got up, packing his dishes together. “What would you like to do today?”
“I feel lazy. I’d like to read, admire the view, maybe visit the water-hole again later, when it gets hot. Unless you have other plans?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “Sounds fine to me,” he said easily. “Leave the dishes,” he added as she made to start washing. “I’ll do them, if you want to get dressed.”
She went back to the bedroom, smiling ruefully as she surveyed the state of the bed, which had a well-used look. After she’d showered she would change the sheets and make it decent again.
* * *
Later in the day they went to the water-hole, and this time neither of them bothered with swimsuits. Magnus didn’t pull her down on the hard grey rock afterwards, but he spread their towels on the grass in the shade of the trees and made leisurely, delicious love to her, completely wiping out the disturbing memory of the strange, bitter little contretemps of the previous day.
And in bed that night they made love again, a lingering, tender journey of rediscovery.
* * *
Only twice in that week did they take the car from the garage—to have a look at some historic battle sites of the nineteenth-century wars between Maori warriors and Queen Victoria’s army, and to replenish their supplies.
They walked along bush tracks and the lonely country road, and watched the ever-changing view of harbour and bush and sky. Talked, but not of Jade’s illness or Magnus’s family. Read quite a lot, lying side by side on the deck or in the bed, sharing quotes from their respective books, as they’d sometimes done a long time ago—but they’d never had such long stretches of time before.
They swam, used the spa and made love. Sometimes it was fierce and explosive, although never as wildly turbulent as on that first evening, and sometimes it was tender and lazily erotic.
Magnus seemed determined to make up for the physical deprivation they’d both suffered not only in quantity but quality. He was inventive and adventurous, and so bent on giving Jade pleasure in every way imaginable that once, when they were still in bed at nearly midday, she teased him about wanting to make her a slave of love.
He didn’t smile. He lifted his head, momentarily distracted from his total concentration on what he was doing to her body, and his eyes gleamed at her so that for an instant she was reminded of some untamed animal, as he said quite seriously, “If that’s what it takes to bind you to me.”
“Magnus!” she said, half-shocked, yet unable to stifle a thrill of primitive satisfaction. “There’s more to loving than sex.”
“So?” he
murmured, holding her eyes and touching her in a new way. “Tell me about it.”
“Magnus!” It was part protest, part plea. She writhed in his hold, biting her lip to stop a cry of sheer ecstasy. “You can’t—”
“Can’t what?” His voice asked in her ear, as her eyes closed and her mouth parted, gasping. “Do this to you? But you like it, don’t you, darling? You want more?”
“I—no! Yes!“ Her head turned frantically towards him. She felt as though she were on the brink of a mountain, about to fly straight up to the sky. And only he could take her there, and guide her safely back to earth.
“Yes?” he said. She heard the deep, rasping note in his voice and knew that he was near the brink, too.
“Yes,” she breathed, “yes, please yes!” And her hand raked into his hair, her mouth frenziedly searching for his. “Kiss me, Magnus, please—”
He did, as she drowned in sensation, released from the sweet, raging torment at last. And she surfaced drowsily minutes later, her body glistening with a fine sheen, her limbs lethargic and pleasantly aching, her eyes heavy.
“Sometimes,” she said tiredly, “I think it’s too much.”
Magnus gave a small, breathy laugh. “Are you saying you don’t like it?”
She could hardly claim that, when she’d just been sobbing with sheer rapture in his arms. She shook her head. How could she explain that despite that, deep down was a small, ineradicable core of unease?
Maybe she had some unacknowledged guilt feelings about sex? She didn’t think she was a prude, but her experience had hardly been extensive. Perhaps she secretly resented Magnus’s apparent familiarity with the refinements of lovemaking. She said, “Where did you learn to—do things like that?”
He laughed. “Imagination is a great teacher.”
“You haven’t done them all with other women?”
He was quiet, the hand idly stroking her hip still for a few seconds. “No,” he said finally. His eyes had turned dark and brooding, and he opened his lips as though about to ask her something, but then he moved suddenly, rolling away from her to leave the bed and gather up his discarded clothes before making for the bathroom.
* * *
On their final morning Magnus brought her breakfast in bed, and after clearing away the dishes took her in his arms and made love to her one more time, with exquisite thoroughness.
While he packed their bags into the car later, Jade wandered out to the terrace, to take a last, regretful look at the view. In the daytime the harbour glinted in the sunlight, and whispers of white cloud skimmed the distant hilltops.
She heard Magnus come quietly out behind her, and then his arms slid about her waist, drawing her against him. She sighed. “I wish we didn’t have to go back.”
“You’ve enjoyed it?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“But?” His breath feathered her ear.
“It’s been almost a dream world, up here. Now we have to face up to reality.”
“And you’re not very good at that, are you?”
Jade stiffened in his arms. She felt as though he’d drenched her in icy water, the cruelty of it taking her breath. She pulled away and turned to face him, shock and hurt showing on her face.
Magnus frowned, and cursed quietly. “I didn’t mean that!” he said forcefully. “Not the way you think. Jade, I’m sorry.“
Her lips felt stiff. “What...did you mean?”
He looked at her tight-lipped, and then shook his head. “This isn’t the time,” he said. And then, almost under his breath, he added, “Maybe there isn’t one.”
“For what?” She didn’t understand what he was talking about, or why he was looking at her so strangely. And yet it wasn’t a new look—she’d caught glimpses of it before—a baffled, wary scrutiny, as though he was unsure of something about her.
He said, “There are still things you don’t remember, aren’t there?”
“You know there are. Little things, mostly. It’s annoying, but not important.”
“You haven’t forgotten any of the important things?”
“I don’t think so.” She smiled. “But then, how can I know something’s important if I’ve forgotten it?”
Magnus didn’t seem to think that was funny. “Do you remember the...accident?”
Her smile faded. “No. But that’s normal, they said. Quite common.” Her car, they’d told her, had gone over a cliff, smashing onto rocks in the water below.
“If that young couple hadn’t come by,” he said, “if they hadn’t gone to the rescue so fast, you’d never have got out of the car alive.” His face looked drawn suddenly, the skin over his cheekbones taut and pale. “I’ve wondered if it was an accident. What were you doing on that cliff, anyway? Miles from home?”
She turned from him, her hands clutching the wooden railing about the deck. “I don’t know. I can’t remember—”
“You knew you were pregnant.” He sounded almost accusing.
The pregnancy must have been unplanned, inconvenient. It had been tacitly understood between them when they married that it would be some time before they could think about a family.
She turned to face him again. “You were very angry about that, weren’t you?” she asked him.
His head jerked up as if he’d received a shock. “Who told you that?”
“I could feel it. I thought, when you first visited me in the hospital, that you wanted to kill me, or kill the baby. That’s why I screamed when you came near.” In that terrifying world where she couldn’t distinguish between reality and the distorted images that filled her mind, she’d had strange fantasies.
Without moving from his stance a few feet away, Magnus seemed to withdraw from her, become more remote, his eyes sinking back in his skull. “You’d lost the baby.”
“I know. In the accident. But sometimes I thought she—”
“She?” Magnus queried sharply.
“I’ve always thought of it as she. A little girl, black-haired, with dark grey eyes. She had a little dimple in her chin, and long, curling eyelashes—”
Magnus was staring at her. She tried to explain. “For a long time she was very real to me. More real than what was going on around me. I think I resisted getting better because as long as I was sick I had my daughter, my baby, safely with me. Deep down I must have known that once I was cured, I’d have to let her go—admit that she was dead.” Her voice sank to a whisper of pain.
“You cried for days,” Magnus said hoarsely, “when you were under that latest treatment. I thought it was making you worse.”
Jade admitted, “I hadn’t allowed myself to mourn her before. Instead, I’d imagined her alive, and growing into a little girl, as she ought to have. I don’t remember how the crash happened, but it wasn’t deliberate, Magnus. I would never have taken my baby’s life.”
“And now you want to replace her?”
“I suppose that’s part of it. I do miss her.”
She hoped he wasn’t going to say she couldn’t miss someone who had never been a real, living person. Even though she knew that, the child who had been her shadowy companion was a sweet and tangible memory.
He didn’t. Instead, his eyes dark and brooding, he said with a peculiar violence, “I hope you’re pregnant now, Jade. I hope I’ve planted my child—our child—in you this week.”
“So do I,” she whispered, but the harshness of his face, his voice, stirred again that familiar apprehension that for days had been almost—though never quite—smothered by his determined concentration on the more enjoyable aspects of their relationship. Not just the sexual dimension, but other shared activities like reading and crosswords and walking. And talking, although this was the first time they’d talked about anything so personal, so important.
Magnus’s mouth twisted in a strange kind of smile. “Perhaps it’s what we both need to wipe out the past.”
* * *
Mrs. Riordan greeted Magnus with cool affection, and Jade with her usual
distant courtesy. Jade thought that the older woman had never got over the humiliation of those early months after her stroke, when she had been forced to accept the most intimate services from her daughter-in-law. The loss of her dignity, for such an imperious person, must have been mortifying, and Jade’s renewed presence in the household was, she supposed, a continual and unwelcome reminder.
Ginette was unable to hide the bright curiosity behind her cheerful smile. “You both look more relaxed,” she said over dinner. “Your second honeymoon has done you good.”
Mrs. Riordan looked at her with faint distaste and asked her to pass the pepper.
Magnus slanted a lightning-fast glance at Jade, but she pretended to be only interested in her meal.
When they’d come home, he’d unpacked in their room and without comment replaced his clothes in the previously empty wardrobe.
Tonight he didn’t retire to his office after dinner, but stayed in the lounge watching television and catching up on some of the newspapers they hadn’t had the opportunity to read that week. And when Jade rose and said good-night, it wasn’t very long before he joined her in the bedroom.
She’d showered and put on a satin nightgown, its sea colour enhancing her eyes, and applied perfume to her skin. She hadn’t heard Magnus come in, and when she emerged from the bathroom he was standing in the middle of the room.
“Déjà vu,” he said softly, his eyes wandering from her hair, damp at the ends and a little untidy, over the low-necked, figure-skimming gown to her bare feet.
He walked over to her, and warm, hard fingers lifted her chin. His kiss lingered lightly on her lips. When he raised his head, his eyes were still closed. “You even smell the same,” he murmured, before he opened them and looked at her again. His glance was suddenly searching. “Did you used to—”
“Used to what?”
Magnus shook his head, stepping back from her. “Never mind. It—isn’t important.” His eyes passed over her again, and this time she thought there was a bitterness in them, mingled with unmistakable desire. “I’ll be with you shortly,” he said, and walked past her, closing the door of the bathroom behind him.
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