Ophelia was seated at her dressing table, brushing her hair before the mirror when she heard the hesitant rap of knuckles on her bedroom door. Her surprise turned to amazement when she realized the knocking came not from the door that opened into the hallway, but from the one that led to Dario’s room.
“Come in,” she said, heart speeding up as she turned to face the door. There was an uncomfortable expression on Dario’s face as he took several steps into the room and then stopped, glancing around him, as though looking for something—anything—upon which to fix his gaze, looking everywhere but at her.
Confronted with his presence, so tall and dark and virile, the room itself seemed to recede, to lose color, focus, importance. Ophelia found herself on her feet and moving toward him before she knew what she was doing. She forced herself to stop and ask quietly, “Was there something you wanted?”
Dario made no answer. For a moment his gaze flickered in the direction of the bed and Ophelia stiffened in surprise. Suddenly conscious of the sheer fabric of the nightgown that was all she wore, she wrapped her arms around herself. Surely, he was not implying…?
“Dinner,” he said at last. Ophelia stared at him in amazement. Was it possible he wished to apologize for his rudeness to her earlier this evening? His next words robbed her of that hope. “I didn’t want to leave you with the mistaken impression I’d come to any kind of decision yet…as to your claim, I mean.”
Ophelia nodded, biting back the sudden swell of disappointment. “Of course. I understand. It’s been something of a shock. You need time to assure yourself that Arthur is really yours.”
“Time?” Dario’s eyes met hers for the first time since he entered her room. His gaze was bitter. “Time is the least of my problems. How am I to assure myself of anything, Lia? I can’t very well break him open and have a look inside, can I?”
“No,” she whispered in response. “No, of course you can’t.” He would not—she knew he would not seriously entertain such a thought. She knew he would never even dream of actually doing such a thing. Still, the very idea caused her heart to race with fear for her son.
If the truth about her became widely known, how many others might have similar ideas—and fewer scruples?
“There are no conclusive tests I might make, are there? No way at all to actually prove any of your claims?”
“None that I know of. Perhaps, if my father were still alive…”
“But he’s not,” Dario said, his voice flat. “And, even if he were, I wouldn’t trust the results of any test he administered.”
“Unfair,” Ophelia protested. “You know in what high regard he always held you. He never lied to you. Nor have I.”
“Didn’t you?” Dario’s gaze turned sorrowful. “The very fact you can say that proves your words false. You married me knowing you could never give me the family I wanted—the family you claimed you wanted as well. How was that not a lie?”
“Do you imagine my father ever discussed the matter of my…of my childbearing abilities with me aforetime? I assure you he did not! The first I knew of his opinions in that regard was when I forced him to repeat to me everything he’d told you. Up until then, I had no idea he believed me barren. And, in any case, he was wrong, so your point is moot.”
“So you say,” Dario grumbled, turning away from her.
Ophelia grabbed his arm, forcing him to face her again. “Yes. I do say so. That used to be enough for you. Why will you not believe me now?”
“Because you aren’t real!” Dario’s fingers closed on her arms, just below her shoulders, pulling her up onto her toes. “Because there’s not one word that comes out of your mouth that I trust to be anything other than a pre-programmed response scripted by your father!” He gazed at her, his face twisted in anguish. “God, Lia, why’d you have to be so damnably beautiful?”
He pulled her closer and, without another word, slanted his mouth over hers. Ophelia’s mind protested. How dare he kiss her when, by his very words, he’d just reduced her to little more than an object? And how dare he kiss her like this after eight years of a separation that he’d initiated? Her body, however, had no such reservations. Her lips parted eagerly for him and when he let go of her shoulders to clasp her face so gently between his hands, her arms were already snaking up to wrap themselves around his neck. This was everything she’d been missing, everything she’d been yearning for, for far too long. She could not deny herself his touch now.
It barely registered in her awareness when he picked her up and carried her to the bed. He came down beside her and all she noticed was the warmth of his breath against her skin.
“I must see you,” he murmured, practically tearing the fabric of her gown in his haste to remove it. “Please.” Again her mind protested. She had changed. The years, the birth of her child, they’d all left their marks upon her. How would he react to the sight of her now?
“Still so lovely,” Dario murmured as his gaze skated over her skin. Ophelia felt her nipples pebble in response. She wanted to hide. She wanted to cover herself up, wrap herself in the bedding, order him to avert his eyes. She did nothing.
And when his hand curved around her breast, his thumb idly rubbing the hardened nub, still she forced herself to lie there. He was her husband. He had every right to look at her, to touch her like this. She wanted him to remember that, to realize she was still the same as ever she’d been, to understand that nothing need change between them.
“Did you suckle him here?” Dario asked, his eyes still trained on the small bit of ruched flesh he now rolled between his fingers. “Did you nurse him with these?”
“Yes.” The one word was all she could manage.
“I wish I could have been there to see it.”
Pain stabbed at Ophelia’s heart. She’d been wrong to deny him that, she’d known it at the time. And, who knew? Maybe all the doubt he was feeling now could have been avoided, if she’d only been less selfish. But she’d been frightened, confused, hurt by his rejection of her. She hadn’t wanted him there. She hadn’t wanted his scowling presence to taint the only joy she had left: her baby. Her perfectly human, perfectly beautiful little boy. He was hers. Hers alone.
Echoes of the anger she’d felt then warred with her body’s need as she watched Dario undress, dispensing with his own clothes in as much haste as he’d done with hers. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he muttered, his face a mask of frustration mixed with naked lust. She wanted to agree. She wanted to turn him away, to put a stop to things now, before they went any further; but the sight of him dried the words in her mouth before she could speak them. The years had left their mark on him as well. He looked harder, leaner, stronger than before and she craved to feel his touch once more.
He lay beside her again and slipped one hand between her legs, gently probing. “You’re so wet for me. You feel so real, so perfect, so ready.”
Ophelia moaned in anticipation as he moved to cover her, as his lips pressed soft kisses along her neck and shoulder, as he carefully lifted her legs, first one then the other, and fitted them around his hips. “And, after all, why should we not have this? We are still married.”
“Yes.” Raising himself onto his elbows, Dario stared grimly down at her. “Damn you for that.”
Before she could respond, he thrust into her. The suddenness of his invasion took her by surprise. It wasn’t that she wasn’t ready for him, he’d been right about that, but it had been so very long…
“Dario.” His name emerged as little more than a startled gasp. Her heart, ticking faster than ever before, stole her breath away. Gears whirred as her lungs struggled to expand. She knew a moment of panic that had her clutching at his arms, grappling at his chest trying, and failing, to push him away. “Dario, please.”
“Don’t deny me this, Lia,” he begged. “Not now. Tell me you need this as much as I do.” Blood raced through her veins, fired by the soft touch of his lips, the wet kisses he bestowed everywhere—her face, her neck, her finger
s, her ears. “Say the words, Lia.”
“I do,” she said, and it was not a lie. Her body craved the punishing pace he’d set for them both, needing the violence, perhaps, to push through the pain their distance had caused her. Still, her mind protested. Why should she not deny him now, when he’d denied her for eight long years; except that by doing so she would only hurt them both. “I do want you, Dario. I always have.”
“And I you. My Lia. My beautiful wife. All I’ve ever wanted in this world.”
They weren’t quite the words of love she’d longed to hear, but for right now, for this moment, they were enough. She threw back her head and cried out softly, arching her back, lifting herself against him, giving herself over entirely to him as she came in wave after scalding wave. Vaguely, she was aware of his own hoarse cry, of the way he stiffened in her arms, of the heat of his seed as it splashed inside her.
And then…there was peace. For one blissfully long, heavenly moment where they lay pressed together, breath rising and falling almost in tandem with each other, there was nothing to mar her joy. Dario’s skin was slick with sweat. Ophelia ran her hands over his back, enjoying the sheer animal pleasure of it, the slide of damp skin on skin, the two of them naked and unashamed, everything just as it ought to be between them.
His face was pressed into the curve of her neck and she almost missed the words. “This was wrong.”
Her breath huffed out on a shaky sigh. She closed her eyes against the pain, the disappointment, against the inevitable hot sting of the tears she would not shed in front of him. “You need to go now.”
“I meant only that this…it changes nothing.”
“I know.” With her eyes still closed and her face averted she felt him pull away from her. As he began to gather his clothes together she fumbled blindly for the bedclothes, covering herself, shielding herself from his sight as well as his censure.
“Lia…”
She shook her head. “Go away, Dario.” The only thing “wrong” here tonight was her. She was wrong for giving in so easily to him, wrong for finding fault with him now, when he’d done no more than tell the truth. Because he was correct in what he’d said: nothing was changed between them, least of all by this. Still, she couldn’t quite forgive him either—not for seducing her, or for despising her afterwards, and especially not for ruining such a perfect moment, the first they’d had in years.
“I’m sorry,” he said after another moment’s silence. His voice was quiet, insistent, sad, as though he were seeking absolution from her.
She shook her head once more, still refusing to look at him, refusing to give him what he wanted. She’d already given him enough for one night. More than enough. Too much, in fact.
She couldn’t keep from listening, though, as he walked away, as he crossed the room, as he closed the door behind him. And then, when he was finally gone, she couldn’t keep from feeling his absence like a cold, bitter wind, whistling through all the chinks in her defenses, chilling her to the bone.
Nothing had changed. He’d been more right than he knew when he said that. She still loved him as much as she ever had, no matter how badly or repeatedly he hurt her. And no matter how it mortified her that she should continue to feel for him what he would never again feel for her.
The knowledge left her cold. She felt empty, defeated, lost, and so very alone. But, no, nothing had changed between them. As far as she could tell, it was likely nothing ever would.
Chapter Six
Dario sleepwalked though the next few days barely aware of what he was about. Blessedly, Ophelia kept her distance from him. He was grateful for that and for her cool demeanor whenever their paths crossed, even though, in the past, such behavior would have driven him mad. He would have viewed it as yet another unwanted reminder that she was wholly without human feelings. And he would have been sorely tempted to go to any lengths possible to prove otherwise.
Now, however, he saw it as something for which to be thankful. He had feared his actions the other night had debased them both. The realization it was only he who was capable of feeling degraded, was but a small comfort to him, but it was a comfort all the same.
It was wrong to feel the way he did about her, to love her as he did, to ache with the need to feel his love returned. And it was wrong to use her as he had, to touch her as he had, to lie with her as though she were an actual woman rather than the mere semblance of one.
She was nothing more than a mechanical contrivance wrought by human hands, created for no other reason than to tempt him. He did not doubt it for a minute. Nor did he doubt his religion would deem her very existence a sin. What was she, after all, but a graven image, a blatant attempt to ape the Almighty? And yet, God help him, he still wanted her. He still missed her—the woman he thought she was, the woman he’d fallen in love with. He missed her with a fierceness that neither eight years nor a thousand miles had managed to dull. And, right now, when she was here, within reach once again, accessible and willing, he wanted nothing more than to worship her with his body, time and time again.
Luckily, he had another puzzle to solve, one whose ultimate unraveling was important enough that, most of the time, it drove all these other thoughts from his mind. Arthur. Was it possible the boy was everything Ophelia claimed him to be, truly human and truly his son?
Those were the questions Dario continued to ponder even as he took Arthur up in the saddle before him for the promised ride upon Leveche. As he coaxed the horse into an easy trot, around and around the paddock, Dario’s thoughts turned to his last encounter with his father-in-law and their unexpectedly educational discussion.
It was the conversation that had left him devastated, that had ripped his life to shreds. It had left him knowing more than he’d ever wanted to know about the method in which Ophelia had been constructed. Ironically, it was that very same knowledge that now gave him what little hope he had for Arthur’s humanity.
While most of Ophelia’s inner workings—her heart, her lungs, the electro-magnetic engine that powered her brain and allowed her autonomous movement—were man-made, the outer shell in which they were housed was human: flesh, skin and hair all fashioned by the professor out of little more than a lock of his late mistress’s hair and some of his own blood.
Dario understood next to nothing of the process by which these “building blocks,” as the professor termed them—these tokens of both her “parents,” had been combined and recombined, replicated and manipulated to create a body that was both human and unique, belonging to Ophelia alone. One thing he had understood, however, was that the steel bones of her skeleton did not allow for growth. She had been built, in other words, on an adult frame so that when Dario had met her, though she appeared a fully grown woman, she was in some ways still nearly an infant. That had been its own source of horror for him—a horror his reputed father-in-law had seemed not to understand in the least.
“My dear boy,” Charles Winter had protested in dismay. “It was not my intention to upset you! I merely explained all of this in an effort to convince you that it was indeed possible for me to do what I’ve proposed. But, even so, I would have held my tongue, had I not been convinced your feelings for my daughter were sufficiently strong that they would weather whatever reservations you might have had upon first learning the truth.”
“She is not your daughter,” Dario replied hotly. “She’s no one’s daughter. And you may save your false regrets. I’m convinced the only reason you’ve told me any of this was in the mistaken belief it would make me more likely to invest in your so-called army.”
Charles shook his head. “This bloody war between the States must be stopped. I believe with every fiber of my being that my soldiers could help end the conflict and prevent further loss of life. Yet, not even for so worthy a goal as that would I have chanced ruining my daughter’s happiness or risking her life. Please tell me I’ve not been mistaken in you? Or, at the very least, assure me that you will keep this knowledge to yourself!”
“She is certainly nothing of the sort. You, of all people, should realize that! She’s every bit as human as you or I.”
Oh, if only that was true. Dario shook his head, clenching his teeth together to keep from screaming at the unfairness of it all. “Do you take me for a fool that you expect me to believe that? It’s a lie! And if you believe it yourself, then you’re the fool and a deluded one at that.”
“She’s her own person, with her own opinions, her own likes and dislikes. I certainly never gave them to her! And why should I not call her daughter? She’s as much my flesh and blood as any of my other children—and every bit as dear to me.”
But Dario had already stopped listening. He could not bear to hear the word “children” spoken at that point—not with any equanimity. Both for the fact that he was still reeling from the revelation that, if he remained faithful to his so-called wife, he would never have any children of his own and from the even less palatable fact that this same wife was, for all practical purposes, little more than a child herself. One he’d been bedding regularly for as long as they’d been married—at least half her life!
He shuddered now, recalling it. How easy it had always been to overlook that fact, just as he had the other night, when she was standing before him, looking so very much like a woman—a full-grown woman, capable of consent—entirely too easy for his peace of mind. It was yet another reason he needed to resolve his doubts about Arthur, in one way or another. The sooner he got back some of that much-needed distance between himself and Ophelia, the better.
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