And the feel of him! Like coming home, recognizing every part of him with her lips and hands and body, yet fabulous and strange. While the world sank down to the minute width of the firelight lapping against darkness, she opened herself to what he wanted, and learned something he had kept entirely concealed for as long as she had known him; that he must have made love to her in imagination a thousand times. Her own experience and newborn intuition told her so. She was completely disarmed. With any other man the intimacy and astonishing sensuality would have appalled her, but he forced her to see that these were things only she had the right to command. And command them she did. Until finally she cried for him to finish it, her arms about him so strongly she could feel the contours of his very bones. The minutes wore away, wrapped in a sated peace. They had fallen into an identical rhythm of breathing, slow and easy, his head against her shoulder, her leg thrown across him. Gradually her rigid clasp on his back relaxed, became a dreamy, circular caress. He sighed, turned over and reversed the way they were lying, quite unconsciously inviting her to slide still deeper into the pleasure of being with him. She put her palm on his flank to feel the texture of his skin, slid her hand across warm muscle and cupped it around the soft, heavy mass in his groin. To feel the curiously alive, independent movements within it was a sensation quite new to her; her past lovers had never interested her sufficiently to want to prolong her sexual curiosity to this languid and undemanding aftermath. Yet suddenly it wasn't languid and undemanding at all, but so enormously exciting she wanted him all over again. Still she was taken unaware, knew a suffocated surprise when he slipped his arms across her back, took her head in his hands and held her close enough to see there was nothing controlled about his mouth, shaped now solely because of her, and for her. Tenderness and humility were literally born in her in that moment. It must have shown in her face, for he was gazing at her with eyes grown so bright she couldn't bear them, and bent over to take his upper lip between her own. Thoughts and senses merged at last, but her cry was smothered soundless, an unuttered wail of gladness which shook her so deeply she lost awareness of everything beyond impulse, the mindless guidance of each urgent minute. The world achieved its ultimate contraction, turned in upon itself, and totally disappeared.
Rainer must have kept the fire going, for when gentle London daylight soaked through the folds of the curtains the room was still warm. This time when he moved Justine became conscious of it, and clutched his arm fearfully. "Don't go!"
"I'm not, Herzchen." He twitched another pillow from the sofa, pushed it behind his head and shifted her closer in to his side, sighing softly. "All right?"
"Yes."
"Are you cold?"
"No, but if you are we could go to bed."
"After making love to you for hours on a fur rug? What a comedown! Even if your sheets are black silk."
"They're ordinary old white ones, cotton. This bit of Drogheda is all right, isn't it?"
"Bit of Drogheda?"
"The rug! It's made of Drogheda kangaroos," she explained. "Not nearly exotic or erotic enough. I'll order you a tiger skin from India."
"Reminds me of a poem I heard once:
Would you like to sin With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer To err with her On some other fur?
"Well, Herzchen, I must say it's high time you bounced back! Between the demands of Eros and Morpheus, you haven't been flippant in half a day." He smiled.
"I don't feel the need at the moment," she said with an answering smile, settling his hand comfortably between her legs. "The tiger skin doggerel just popped out because it was too good to resist, but I haven't got a single skeleton left to hide from you, so there's not much point in flippancy, is there?" She sniffed, suddenly aware of a faint odor of stale fish drifting on the air. "Heavens, you didn't get any dinner and now it's time for breakfast! I can't expect you to live on love!"
"Not if you expect such strenuous demonstrations of it, anyway." "Go on, you enjoyed every moment of it."
"Indeed I did." He sighed, stretched, yawned. "I wonder if you have any idea how happy I am."
"Oh, I think so," she said quietly:
He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. "Tell me, was Desdemona the only reason you came back to London?"
Grabbing his ear, she tweaked it painfully. "Now it's my turn to pay you back for all those headmasterish questions! What do you think?" He prized her fingers away easily, grinning. "If you don't answer me, Herzchen, I'll strangle you far more permanently than Marc does." "I came back to London to do Desdemona, but because of you. I haven't been able to call my life my own since you kissed me in Rome, and well you know it. You're a very intelligent man, Rainer Moerling Hartheim."
"Intelligent enough to have known I wanted you for my wife almost the first moment I saw you," he said.
She sat up quickly. "Wife?"
"Wife. If I'd wanted you for my mistress I'd have taken you years ago, and I could have. I know how your mind works; it would have been relatively easy. The only reason I didn't was because I wanted you for my wife and I knew you weren't ready to accept the idea of a husband."
"I don't know that I am now," she said, digesting it. He got to his feet, pulling her up to stand against him. "Well, you can put in a little practice by getting me some breakfast. If this was my house I'd do the honors, but in your kitchen you're the cook."
"I don't mind getting your breakfast this morning, but theoretically to commit myself until the day I die?" She shook her head. "I don't think that's my cup of tea, Rain."