One Night for Love

Could she draw lasting strength from this dream-come-true? Lily wondered. He could not possibly love someone so unsuited to his station in life despite his endearments while he had been making love to her. But he was not averse to her either. He was not repulsed by her. He had wanted her—she had felt it in the growing tension between them as they had sat at the fireside. And he had enjoyed their lovemaking. She had enjoyed it too. All her worst fears—that the act itself would always disgust her, no matter who the lover—had been put to rest. The lover made all the difference to the act. And she loved him.

Perhaps, she thought, something had been gained from this night. They had grown comfortable together, both physically and emotionally. They had talked as friends. They had come together as lovers. She was not so naive as to believe that all their problems were now solved and that they could proceed to live happily ever after. Far from it. But perhaps an impossibility had become just a little more possible tonight.

'I always love waking up here,' he said, his voice low against her ear. 'I listen to the waterfall and see the edge of the thatch on the roof through the window and smell the vegetation. And I can imagine that the world is very far away.'

'Do you sometimes wish it were?' she asked him.

'Frequently.' He moved her hair back from her face with one finger and settled it behind her shoulder. 'But not forever. Escape is a wonderful thing as long as one can go back again.'

He did not, then, feel the yearning to make this night last forever?

He kissed her—softly, lazily. And she kissed him back, feeling the warm, relaxed firmness of his man's body with the soft curves of her own, feeling desire surging through her again like new blood. She could feel the gradual tightening in her breasts and the hardening of her nipples, the aching in her womb and along her inner thighs, the throbbing in the passage between. And she could feel him grow and harden against her abdomen.

They did nothing but kiss for several minutes with softly parted lips. But warmth became heat between them and they were ready without the need for more foreplay.

'Come on top of me,' he said, 'and take your pleasure as you wish, Lily.'

What an unbelievable luxury it was, she thought, to feel desire before a coupling, to know from the throbbing ache that there would be the wonder of completion. And to be invited to take her pleasure in her way—as if she mattered as much as he did. And she believed that with him it was true. He might not love her, but she mattered to him. If he was to couple with her and take pleasure of her, he would take care to give it too.

How very different two men could be—but she did not choose to dwell upon comparisons.

They had done it this way on their wedding night, the second time, she remembered, though he had lifted her over him then and positioned her and held her firm while he took her, her body heavy on his. She had been passive, quite without knowledge. They had had to be very quiet because their tent had been set only a little apart from where a whole company of men slept. She had been sore from the first time and it had hurt and felt wonderful all at the same time.

She came astride him after he had kicked back the blankets and raised his knees to set his feet flat on the bed. She kneeled over him, hugging his sides with her knees while she took hold of him in one hand and placed him at her entrance. She spread her hands on his chest, closed her eyes, and lowered herself onto him.

There could not possibly be a more delightful sensation in the world, she thought, feeling his rigid length stretching her deep, clenching inner muscles about him—this voluntary joining of bodies in preparation for the act's beginning. Unless it was the final moment, when everything dissolved into fulfillment and peace. Or perhaps the act itself was the most beautiful part—the pounding rhythm, the ache spiraling gradually upward through her womb, into her breasts, into every nerve ending in her body, the assurance that this man, this lover, this husband would take her to its end. She opened her eyes and looked down into his.

'This feels so very good,' she told him.

'Yes,' he agreed, 'it does.'

It had never occurred to her until he had suggested it that it might be possible to be less than passive in the sexual act. She had always lain very still—in wonder and enjoyment during that first night and this last, in simple endurance for those seven months. She had never thought of the possibility of being a lover—only of being the loved or the used. But she could take her pleasure as she wished, he had told her. And true to his word—though she knew enough now about men to realize that it must be difficult for him—he was lying quite still beneath her, though he was hard and hot inside her.

How did she wish to take it? She braced her hands on his chest, lifted herself almost off him, and brought herself down again. It was possible, she discovered as she repeated the move over and over again, to set the rhythm she had always thought a man's exclusive preserve and to find it intensely exciting.

'Ah, yes,' he said, his voice husky, his hands coming to her hips and grasping her lightly there, 'ride me, then, Lily. Ride me hard.'

It was a startling, erotic comparison. She rode him hard and harder, her eyes squeezed shut to concentrate all the sensation inside her and inside him, inside their joined selves—there. She became aware of sound as much as of feeling—their labored breathing, the wet suck and pull of her ride, the squeaking of the bedsprings. And of smell—soap and cologne and a log-dead wood fire and the musk of sex.

But then everything was focused inward on the one spot deep within where she had resisted the deep descent time and time again, tensing against it even as she rode hard onto it, tensing and tensing until fear threatened her concentration.

'Trust it, Lily. Trust me,' his voice said. 'I will not fail you again.'

She always had, always would trust him. And he never had failed her. Never.

But it took a deliberate effort of faith to open, to ride down onto him again without any defense at all against pain, against falling, against death.

She opened—and opened and opened as he clamped his hands hard on her hips at last and held her still while he drove against and through and again through and into and beyond and…

She heard herself cry out.

She did not lose herself completely until after she felt him come deep into the secret place where only she had ever lived, and the two of them met and merged and became one self.