Again and Again

He was silent

“Did you hear me?” Challenge in each syllable.

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

He shook his head again. “No, I can’t” Although the reasons he couldn’t weren’t entirely clear. Or maybe they were clear, but he refused to acknowledge them. Or maybe wanting and having were two different things, although the wanting part wasn’t open to discussion right now. He began unbuttoning the collar button on his evening shirt.

“Simon, don’t!”

“I’m willing to accede to your rules, but that’s all I’m willing to do. I’m not leaving. So scream if you wish.”

“And if I do?”

“I’ll take you away, right now, this minute.”

“I hate you,” she whispered.

“No, you don’t”

“Then I should.”

“Don’t. I’ll live with your ridiculous rules. That makes you triumphant”

“Damn you, Simon!”

He smiled. “Is that a yes?”

“Only to the most obtuse.”

“I doubt you’re obtuse either. Make up your mind.” He glanced at the clock. “If we’re staying here, there’s not much time left.”

He’d take her away if she refused; he’d made that plain. “No comments in public, now?”

“I’ll be completely circumspect”

“You won’t be staying long, will you?”

“Probably not,” he lied. His curfew tonight was less than two hours away and he didn’t want to waste it in further conversation.

“Very well.”

He laughed. “Your enthusiasm is gratifying.”

She glanced at his obvious erection. “It doesn’t seem to have affected your interest.”

“We’ve missed you.”

“I suspect you say that to all your women.”

“Are you mine, then?”

She took note of the time. “For an hour and a half I am.”

“I’m flattered,” he said as casually. “Would you like me to undress you?”

“In these kind of arrangements, don’t the ladies usually undress themselves?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” he asked with a hard look, his hands arrested on one gold cuff link.

“Good God, Simon. I didn’t sleep my way across Europe, so kindly stop acting like a jealous husband.”

His eyes narrowed further as he set the cuff link on the bedside table. “Did your husband have reason to be jealous?”

“Are we questioning degrees of intemperance here? Because I don’t think you of all people have the right. And I doubt, in these circumstances, you grill the ladies you’re about to sleep with on their virtue.”

“I’ve never exactly thought of you in those terms.” He slid the second cuff link free, set it aside and tugged his shirt out of his trousers.

“Then don’t start. But if you’d rather, I wouldn’t mind saying good night and best wishes for your future. Truthfully, I’d prefer that.”

“No.” His voice was unrelenting and partly muffled as he pulled his shirt over his head. He tossed it aside.

“Yes, Captain.”

He went still, his gaze shuttered. “I haven’t heard that for a long time.”

“Your scars stand out in the candlelight.” His nude torso was burnished by the flickering light, his virility impossible to ignore.

‘They’re almost gone,“ he said, brusquely.

They weren’t, nor would they ever be, she thought, remembering how she’d helped care for him when he came back from Waterloo, nearly dead.

He didn’t remember the misery of those days, he recalled instead the bewitching game they’d played as he’d recuperated. His sigh was part memory, part regret. “What the hell went wrong?” he murmured.

She didn’t need clarification. She shrugged. “Too many things to count.” She looked past him for a moment, at a loss to even begin to define when the ruin had begun. Then her gaze returned to his and she suddenly smiled. “Do you want to play because I don’t want to remember the disasters.”

He inhaled softly, the disasters having come in stages he didn’t want to think about either. He nodded. “You choose which one.”

“The one where you knock on the door.”

His mouth turned up slightly at the corners. “Your favorite.”

“You asked,” she said, not quite able to read his tone. “Would you rather do yours?”

He shook his head. “I like that one too.”

She tipped her head faintly, her gaze on his trousers. “I can tell.”

He chuckled. “They were all my favorites. What the hell happened to us?”

She could have told him the truth-that aside from any number of adjunct disagreements he hadn’t been ready to think of marriage… not really, although they’d talked about it since they were young. “I felt like traveling,” she said, lightly instead, rising from the bed and moving toward him. “But right now, Captain, I can’t let you in,” she murmured. “It’s very late, and I’m alone in the house.”

The words were like a line from a song, forever etched in his memory and he answered as he had so many times before, “Forgive me, my lady. But I have my orders to bivouac here.”

She clutched the front of her nightgown, holding it tightly at her neck. “Surely… there… must be… some mistake.”

The hesitation in her voice was exactly the same, innocent, winsomely appealing and he felt the same surge of desire he’d always felt when he heard it “I’m afraid there’s no mistake. The campaign has moved this way and we’re in pursuit…” His voice trailed off.

She didn’t find it difficult to mimic apprehension; he was gazing at her with naked lust. “I… don’t know… what to say.”

“Forgive me. But my orders are plain.”

“If you insist on coming in… you must stay… in the parlor.”

“Of course. You needn’t fear, my lady. You’re completely safe.”

“Thank you.” A faint smiled played about her mouth and she nodded at his partial nudity. “You’re ahead of me.” She waved her hand in a small circle as though moving them along. “Would you like to dry your coat by the fire?” Her voice had reverted to her actress intonation.

“If I may…”

She turned and made a pretense of placing his coat by an imaginary fire, her breath in her throat

He came up behind her like he had so many times before; she could feel the heat of his body, the hard length of his arousal pressed into her buttocks. As she shivered at the sudden flaring heat, his erection moved and swelled against her.

“I’ve been on campaign for weeks,” he whispered, lifting her hair from the back of her neck, the coolness a signal memory from the past. “I haven’t seen a woman for so long…”

She stiffened in anticipation.

And then he bent his head and touched his mouth to the nape of her neck.

So light a kiss shouldn’t have made her so frantic, so covetous and eager. It hadn’t always. Not to this staggering degree. Please, please… now, she wanted to say. I can’t wait another second.

But he whispered, “I’m sorry, my lady. I shouldn’t have done that.”

And for a flashing moment she wasn’t sure what was now and what was then. But he’d stepped back, like he