They danced in silence for a while, each thinking that by this time tomorrow they would have gone their separate ways.
Selena was full of confusion. She’d said goodbyes before, but never like this. She tried to be practical. All she had to do was hold out until he’d gone, and then forget him. It should be easy forgetting a man half a world away. But her heart was telling her that he would never be far away from her again, because she would carry him with her every moment, for the rest of her life.
The music changed. Suddenly a lone violin was playing a melancholy strain of longing and farewell. She would never see him again. She held him close and her heart ached.
With her eyes closed, she didn’t see where he was taking her. She only knew that they were dancing, circling, circling, while the sounds faded. She danced on in a dream where there was only herself and him, circling around and around.
‘Selena…’
His voice whispering her name made her open her eyes to find his face close to hers.
‘Selena,’ he said again, his breath brushing her face, and her murmured, ‘Yes,’ was so swift that their breath intermingled.
Then his mouth was on hers, and he was kissing her with a fierceness born out of desperation. She was slipping through his fingers, and holding her was like trying to hold onto quicksilver.
She answered him with the same fierceness. From the moment they’d met something had been bound to happen between them, and it had taken too long. Now she wouldn’t let it go. She would have her hour, whatever it cost, and live in its glory all her days.
Her life had taught her little about love and tenderness. What she knew she’d discovered for herself. Something was happening inside her now that was totally new. She hadn’t known before that just being in a man’s arms could make her ache with joy and sadness together, so that she didn’t know which one was the greater. Nor did it matter. She was alive to feelings and sensations that she would never regret, no matter how much pain they might cost her. And there would be pain. Life had taught her that much.
She’d kissed other men, but none like this. He was a man whom, she guessed, had lived a full life with women, yet his touch had a curious innocence about it, as though he too was experiencing something for the first time. Through the driving urgency she could still feel the tenderness, as though caring for her mattered more to him than any other satisfaction.
Yet he wanted her to the point where it was driving him crazy. She could sense that through the trembling of his great, powerful body, the rise and fall of his chest. It excited her to know that she affected him so much. She wanted him as much in thrall to her as she was to him, and she teased him with her lips, urging him on to the point where they would meet.
It was he who ended the kiss, seizing her shoulders and pushing her back a few inches, so that he could look into her face. His own was wild.
‘We picked one heckuva time,’ he gasped. ‘Maybe we should-’
‘Maybe we should what? Be sensible? Who wants to be sensible?’
‘Well I sure don’t, but you-Selena, tomorrow-’ He stopped. The words of cool wisdom hung in the air and died unspoken.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes-’
From somewhere in the background a sound was growing closer. Cheering, laughing, singing, cheerful guests in the last yell of enjoyment before the party began to break up. Leo looked desperately to where light and noise were streaming towards him, engulfing him.
‘Hey, look who’s hiding himself under the trees!’
‘Who is she, Leo?’
He laughed loudly, trying to brush it off. Someone pressed a drink on him and he took it. Everyone was kissing everyone.
When he looked around for Selena she had gone.
It seemed an age before the goodnights were said, but at last the place was quiet and Leo could draw a long breath. Perhaps they could still have a moment alone together, and answer some of the questions that had been raised under the trees.
But there was no sign of Selena. So many promises in her kiss, and she’d just left him.
He made his way up to bed, frowning, trying to see a way through the confusion. Hell would freeze over before he would go knocking on her door. The next move had to be hers.
So he told himself. But he still went to her door and knocked softly. It was that or spend the rest of his life wondering. Getting no reply he knocked a little louder, and waited. Still no reply.
He went to his own room. At the window he looked out on the dark landscape, knowing it had been foolish to indulge in dreams when he was leaving tomorrow. Whatever happened now was too late. He stood there, telling himself it was best to be sensible, and trying to believe it.
He didn’t know what made him aware that he wasn’t alone in the room. It wasn’t even as definite as the sound of breathing, but something changed in the atmosphere, and when he stretched out his hand to the lamp a voice in the darkness whispered, ‘Don’t put on the light.’
‘Where are you?’ he said.
She didn’t answer, but the next moment two soft arms were around his neck, and a slim, naked body was pressed against his.
‘You were here all the time?’ he asked. ‘I just got back from-’
‘I know, I heard you.’ Her chuckle delighted him.
He’d remembered her from the first day as a gazelle, a nymph, so delicately built was she. Now in the darkness his hands discovered what his eyes had known, and found the beauty he’d dreamed of since that moment.
Her fingers were working on his shirt, opening the buttons, finding his chest, the slight rise and fall of his muscles, sliding her palms over them.
‘If you don’t mean to follow through, you’re doing something very dangerous,’ Leo groaned.
‘I never start what I don’t mean to finish,’ she murmured so that her breath fanned his face.
She was easing his shirt down his arms as she spoke, inch by inch until he couldn’t stand it any more and wrenched it off. Then he could pull her against him, revelling in the feel of her soft skin against his own. He closed his eyes, wondering how anything could feel so good and still leave him standing.
He stripped off the rest of his clothes as fast as he could. This had been too long in coming to waste any time. Holding onto each other they made their way to the bed and collapsed on it so that he fell on his back with her on top of him.
‘Remember when we were like this before?’ she asked.
‘The first day-I got you out of the bath-how can I forget?’
‘We didn’t end up like this though.’
‘We would have done if I’d had anything to do with it,’ he growled.
‘Me too.’
‘As soon as that?’
‘As soon as that.’
She was laughing like a siren who’d finally enticed her prey into her circle, and that was fine by him. He’d happily be the prey, or anything, as long it led to this.
His hands were all over her, enjoying her lithe strength, her fluid movements, and what she was doing to him.
‘I thought you were stiff and bruised,’ she teased.
‘My energy’s coming back by the minute.’
She began covering him with kisses. She seemed to know him already, understanding by instinct the little caresses that drove him wild. When Leo slowly sat up, holding her in his lap, her fingers immediately found the place on the back of his neck where the lightest touch could reduce him to shivers. From there it was just a matter of time before she discovered how vulnerable his spine was as well.
‘Witch,’ he growled.
‘Hmm!’
Suddenly he could stand it no longer. With a deep laugh he rolled over, tossing her onto her back with him on
