“Because they are an unnecessary restriction of freedom,” he said, kneeling down to throw back the blankets. “And I want to be free.”
He crawled in beside her, smelling damp and masculine, and eased his long body between the sheets with that sensuous enjoyment of a soft bed that she had noticed once before, on a bed of grass.
“Ahh!” he breathed, his broad biceps flexing as he folded his arms under his head. “I suppose whoever invented the spring mattress died a millionaire. Did he? “
She couldn’t help laughing at this.
“How on earth would I know?”
“Is he not a famous hero?” Mischa asked. “The Americans have made heroes of so many—surely they have not let this one pass unsung?”
“Next time I talk to an American contact I’ll ask him for you, shall I?” she laughed.
“Thank you,” he said, and she realised with a sinking heart that that had sounded as though she would be seeing him again.
“Lady,” he said gently, reaching an arm towards her, “come here. Don’t be afraid of me—I want to talk to you.”
She could not resist the tone in his voice. Wordlessly she slid to his side under the blankets and, under the pressure of his hand, rested her head against his shoulder in his gentle embrace.
“How warm you are against me,” he breathed. “Lady, my Lady—don’t be afraid of me tonight,” he whispered as she tensed. “I will not try to make love to you, my love, much as I want to.”
“Why not?” she whispered, her stomach suddenly filled with a wild fluttering.
“Because I love you,” Mischa said. “And I want you to love me when we make love again.”
Her jaw clenched against his chest at his first mention of love, and he felt it.
“Mischa, I will never love you,” she said quietly. “Don’t think it.”
He absorbed that in silence. “You loved me once,” he said at last.
“More fool me.”
He leaned up over her, his hand stroking her arm from shoulder to elbow, and she shivered.
“You tremble when I touch you, Lady. You tremble with desire,” he said. “Do you think this means nothing?”
“It means you’re very attractive and I’m attracted to you,” Laddy said flatly.
“That is all?” She looked wordlessly at him, letting him read the answer in her eyes. “And how many other attractive men create this response in you? How many men have loved you since I left you in the spring?” he asked.
Her eyes widened in fear, and she twisted her face away. Mischa caught her chin and turned her head back, looking deep into her eyes.
“Say it!” he commanded. “One? Two?” He paused. She made no sign. “Three?”
“No, of course not!” she exploded.
He breathed, “Of course not? A woman like you—passionate as I know you are, beautiful, intelligent, loving—do you tell me that no man has touched you since I went away?”
“That’s right,” she said angrily, unable to lie.
He took a deep breath. “Yet you tell yourself that you want me only because I am physically attractive?”
“Well, I meant it’s a purely physical attraction,” she muttered.
“What foolish things are taught about love,” he said after a moment. “I cannot believe that you yourself believe this.”
“I don’t see why not!” she flared. “You feel a physical attraction for me, too, Mischa, I know that much!”
He laughed gently, laying his broad hand against her cheek and temple. “Of course I do, my dearest love. But this is because I love you.”
She felt shakily near tears for a moment and bit her lip.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” she said dully. “I’ll never believe again that you love me, Mischa. You can’t convince me you know what love is.”
“I will show you, and I will convince you,” he said quietly. “I will give you all the time you need, Lady. Because I know that you love me. Under the pain and hurt I made for you, there is still love. I know it!” he whispered, holding her to him and brushing her brow with his lips.
“No,” she said, closing her eyes against the look in his—a look of love that was never going to fool her again.
“Don’t think about it now,” he said. “Go to sleep against me as though we have been married twenty-five years—as, one day, if we live, we will be. Go to sleep, my love. Sleep on this: that I have loved you since before the dawn of time, and I always will.”
* * *
Laddy was struggling through snow up to her thighs, blinded by driving flakes, her whole body frozen. A bright white sun reflected glaringly from the endless white around her, and she knew she was utterly alone. The loneliness was an ache inside her, and in her dream she thought, I have felt this way before.
There was a small house ahead of her, and she knew it was her childhood home in Vancouver, somehow different, and here in the middle of nowhere. There was smoke coming from the chimney, and the door was open. Her struggle ceased, and she was inside the door, where a fire burned in a stone fireplace, and someone was sitting in a chair in front of it. Warmth seeped through her, and the lonely feeling stopped. “I’m home!” she said aloud, and the sound of her voice woke her.
She was curled up against Mischa and his arms wrapped her. He was watching her as she woke, his face lighted by the glow of the fire.
“You had kicked off the blankets,” he whispered. “When I warmed you, you said, ‘I’m home’.” His arms tightened around her.
In her sleep-and-dream-fuddled state, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, and as his mouth came down on hers she delighted in the familiar/ unfamiliar fire that slowly warmed her.
He lifted his mouth from hers for a moment to look at her. “You are so beautiful,” he said. This time his slow kiss deepened, and his tongue sought out the soft recesses of her mouth with an intensity that made her tremble. As he raised his chest to draw her under him, the blankets fell away from his naked back, and drowsy with sleep and love, Laddy lifted her arms to stroke the warm taut skin.
The contact of those firm rippling muscles touched something deep within her, and she tightened her arms around his back as though she would never let him go—as though she would break him first, but knowing he could never be broken.
“Mischa,” she breathed, when he lifted his mouth again, and it was a passionate whisper that told him everything.
His large powerful hands cupped her head, and she felt his mouth trace the line of her neck down to her shoulder, and shuddered at the response of the thousand nerves that suddenly clustered there.
She could hear the stars, she could touch the silence of the snow, she could see infinity. Every sense was attuned, and her heart was molten gold in her breast. She wanted to be in his arms forever, to go through time in this one moment.
Unbuttoning her pyjama top, Mischa’s hand trembled, mute evidence of such passionate need that she trembled, too. At last he pulled her pyjama jacket open, and his eyes closed for a moment. Then he said hoarsely, “Lady, Lady, I have waited so long for you!” Looking deep into her eyes, he cupped his hand over her breast, and smiled when she moaned in response. “You see,” he said, and she saw what she had always known, that his touch moved her to passion, and she answered,
“Yes.”
Her voice was a whisper, and his hand moved over her body with a firm caress that was almost painful. “Tell me!” he demanded.
She could hardly speak. “Yes,” she said again, and this time the whisper was a moan of desire, and again he closed his eyes.
“Yes,” he said.
He moved under the blankets, and then he was lying full-length on her body, their legs touching all along their length, and she could feel the heat and strength of his powerful thighs against the inside of her own, and his hard sex pressed hungrily against her.
This touch immobilised her like a blow, and her arms fell away from him, curving over the pillow above her head. His
hands grasped her wrists and held them there. She yearned to touch him, to run her hands and mouth over his skin, but when she tried to move, he held her fast.
Never in her life had she felt so completely in anyone’s power. Physically and mentally she was his. If the cottage burned down around them she could not move until he gave the word.
He would not let her touch him. He held her wrists and bent his head to kiss her neck, her shoulders, her breasts until she cried out. She gazed at him, willing him to kiss her mouth again, waiting the agonizing time it took him to lower his mouth to her own, waiting for the deep thrusting kiss that, when it finally came, made her want to weep in ecstasy.
Unable to respond with her hands, she moved her long legs against his longer ones, frantic to touch him, to move him, to possess him completely. With a sudden movement, he jerked his legs against hers, pushing them farther apart, and raised his head to see in her eyes the power he had over her.
But she had power over him, too. His eyes blazed with need, and he trembled so that she felt it in her wrists where his hands still held her.
Mischa released one wrist to reach down and slide his hand over her pyjamaed leg. “Pyjamas,” he said softly. “Did I not tell you that they are a restriction of freedom?” His hand moved up to the elastic at her waist, and she felt his rough touch on the skin of her hip.
“Mischa,” she begged, and raised her free hand to the mat of black hair on his chest.
“Not yet,” he said. “First I want you to remember.” He lifted his hand to her mouth, and his thumb stroked her lower lip. “Let us start again at the beginning, Lady. Do you remember?” he whispered. “Do you remember the paintings of my friend Vaclav?”
She breathed hoarsely as the memory of that night arose in her heart, the memory that had lived in her for so many years. Her mouth burned as he stroked it, and she was the woman in the painting, and knew that in the golden fireheat her skin glowed like the artist’s oils. “Do you remember, my Lady?”
“I remember,” she choked.
“I could scarcely touch you. I was crazy with wanting, crazy to kiss you. I told you how I would kiss your breasts, do you remember it?” he asked softly, and he bent his head and the heat and damp of his mouth found her breast, his tongue stroked the nipple, and she heard that long ago voice again and didn’t know if it was memory or reality. “My mouth will be hot against your breast, and your stomach will melt in answer,” she heard, then and now.
“Mischa,” she whispered.
“I remember every word I said to you then, my Lady,” he said. “Night after night, in those bleak places they kept me, I did remember that night as if it was your body I touched, as I told you I would—do you remember?—and the memory kept me alive.”
“Thank God,” she whispered, grateful beyond expression that he had been kept alive, had returned to her from those jaws of hell.
“‘I will lie in your body, and the hunger will consume us…but not yet, my beloved, we do not give in yet. First I will stroke your thighs, making that sweet doorway to pleasure melt for me,’“ he said, then or now, or both, she couldn’t be sure. She saw the painting of a woman, saw his hand gentle on those painted inner thighs, felt it against her own skin. She arched her back, pressed her head into the pillow.
“‘And you will arch your back, wanting more and more my touch, lifting your breasts to my mouth.’“ His palm was rough against her sensitive nipple, sending electricity through every cell. His hand tangled in her hair and his mouth fell against her breast as if he were starving for the taste of her skin.
“‘You will ask me to love you,’“ he murmured, and she saw the painting of a woman with open body, her hungry arms raised, her eyes pleading.
“Love me,” she begged now.
“Not yet.” His voice was suddenly hoarse. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “I love you, Lady. Tell me that you love me. Let me hear you say it.” And in the moment he said it Laddy knew that it was true. The cold that had imprisoned her heart was gone; she knew that this passion was love.
It was as it had been eight long months ago: her heart threatening to burst within her, filling her with warmth and life. She had never hated him, her hatred had been hurt and betrayal and fear. And she was a fool to be afraid.
She licked her lips. “I…” she began, and paused, and then his mouth was urgent on hers, as if his lips could draw out the words she had not spoken, such passion in his kiss that it drowned her.
He drew off her pyjamas and kicked off his own, and at last they were naked on the sheet in the flickering firelight. She lay under the touch of his hands and his body, hungry for the pleasure he was giving her, wordlessly crying her love as her body rose to meet the first sweet, painful thrust of his.
He set out then to drown her in pleasure. His hands, rough with passion, made her cry out, and his mouth made her weep. And his body pushed hungrily in and in, driving her towards that place they both wanted to be.
“I love you,” he cried at last. “Do you hear me, my Lady, my love? I love you. If you take this from me now you take a gift of love.”
And when her hands gripped him and her head arched back on a high pleading cry, he answered her cry, and melting heat coursed through her blood, her nerves, her brain...and her heart.
“I love you,” Laddy cried, knowing it for a shining truth, and fear and pain were destroyed in its light. She loved him, no matter what the price. She would not hide from love anymore. “Mischa, I love you,” she said again, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.
His body surged against her, and in one motion he gathered her up against him, shuddering and trembling and whispering over and over: “Love me, oh my Lady, love me....”
Chapter 20
Trefelin was a collection of oddly-shaped bumps under a thick white quilt that stretched from the cliff top to the horizon of low encircling hills. Smoke was rising from fluffy white chimneys as if from strange subterranean dwellings. The sun, bright in a blue sky, sparked blindingly from the dark icy sea and the diamond crystals of white snow.
“Good morning!” chirruped the little mound of snow at the door that seemed to have Rhodri’s eyes and voice. “Have you seen the snow, both of you?”
“How could we not?” Mischa asked him, his strong white teeth clenched on his pipe, while Laddy burst into laughter.
“Have you been in an avalanche?” she demanded. “Rhodri, you look like an igloo!”
“Yes, they have igloos in Canada, don’t they?” Rhodri said with interest, futilely trying to brush off the worst of the snow before coming in. “Did you live in one when you were little, Lady?” Although he called her Laddy in any other company, when the three of them were alone he had taken to pronouncing her name as Mischa did. His thin, smiling face was pink with exertion, and his dark eyes were glowing with his joy at seeing both of them, and Laddy loved him.
She had to laugh. “An igloo!” she repeated. “Rhodri, where I lived we hardly even got snow at Christmas. Speak to Mischa, here. He’s the one who knows his snow.”
“Be careful,” Mischa said, “or you will soon know it as well as Rhodri.”
Giving up on the task of trying to stamp off his burden of snow while standing above thigh deep in the stuff, Rhodri bounced inside like a confident puppy, sure of his welcome whatever his condition. Laughing, they stepped back and Mischa closed the door behind him. Then he jumped vigorously up and down, and it was slowly revealed that he wore a white jacket.
“I thought that was all snow,” Laddy said.
“Well, there was quite a bit, wasn’t there?” Rhodri said, looking with interested pride at the circle of snow on the floor around his feet. “I like it, you know,” he confided, as Mischa opened the door again and swept the snow out. “I have never seen real snow before. It is very white, isn’t it, when it is thick? Perhaps when I am older I will live in Canada. Brigit sent you a loaf of fresh-baked bread, but I do not think it is as warm as it was,” he warned, holding out a whit
e plastic-wrapped object. “And I am to be sure you are both all right.”
Still laughing, Laddy took the bread. “Take off your coat,” she said. “Have breakfast with us.”
“I am not allowed to, no matter how much you ask,” Rhodri said sadly. “I am to go home for breakfast, Brigit says. Mairi, too.” He looked from one to the other. “Brigit wants to know if you are finally going to get married,” he said. “She said I was not to ask, but I wish to know, too, and I knew you would not mind if I said so.”
Careful not to look at Mischa, Laddy focussed on the bread. It was still faintly warm, and its fresh smell filled her nostrils as she unwrapped the thick brown loaf with more care than was strictly necessary.
“We are certainly getting married,” Mischa’s voice said, and Laddy bit her lip, smiling, and flicked her gaze up to his.
“If I have to drag you there,” he told her.
With a satisfied, “Good,” Rhodri turned to the door. “There is the cathedral in St. David’s,” he said over his shoulder. “You had better get married there.” And with this settled to his satisfaction, he pulled open the door and set out back along the shadowed path of his footprints that was the only mark on the dazzling whiteness.
Laddy and Mischa stood in the doorway, looking down towards the village and breathing deeply in the cold, crackling winter air.
“All that snow,” breathed Laddy. “Just like my dream.”
Mischa’s arm tightened around her. “You are home safe now, my Lady. I don’t let you go again.”
She nuzzled the thick white wool of his sweater under her cheek. “Please don’t ever let me go,” she said.
As Rhodri’s thin figure receded in the distance they drew back inside and closed the door, shivering as the icy air that had crept through their clothes finally attacked the warmth of their skin. The kettle was just coming to a boil on the stove: a cozy sound, and Laddy sighed in deep contentment.
“We’re going to be stuck here for a while, I think,” she said.
“Good,” said Mischa, with masculine satisfaction.
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