senses.
The dress slipped off from her shoulders first, and Bernadotte felt himself quicken when her jutting breasts were exposed. Her nipples were erect, as though sculpted in pink marble. “Hurry,” he said. And she pushed the fabric over her hips, obedient to his urgent tone. Her obedience was a loving pleasure though, for she'd wanted him far longer than he'd felt the need for her. Count Bernadotte Fersten had been her hero for as long as she could remember.
As her dress fell in jonquil folds about her feet, she stepped out of her sandals.
Rising from the chair, Bernadotte took her hand, leading her the few scant feet to where the flagstone terrace met the lush, green lawn. Drawing her into his arms, he kissed her on the mouth for the first time.
While the warm sun bathed her nude body and the count's powerful embrace held her tightly, she felt a delicious dizziness. Juliana had to lift her face to meet his mouth, arching her graceful throat. With shameless eagerness she opened her mouth to his demands, laced her arms tightly around his neck, and brushed her hips against his rigid arousal.
She only did that once before she found herself beneath him on the lawn, her legs nudged wide while Bernadotte swiftly opened his trousers. With a craving that matched his own, she wanted him deeply inside her. It was all she'd thought of for years. His erection free, he entered her immediately, lacking his normal finesse, only murmuring “I'm sorry,” into the softness of her hair. Then, in the next instant, he buried himself with a low moan into her tight virgin passage.
What a strange thing to say, she thought, smiling her welcome, luring and surrounding him with a natural instinct, capturing, at last, the lover of her adolescent dreams.
He was moving inside her slowly, his eyes closed, his strong arms holding his weight lightly above her, his white silk shirt gathering grass stains at the elbows, his light-colored flannels ruined with green knees. The second strong thrust of his hips forced him so deeply inside her, she felt her toes tingle with pleasure. His rhythm was slow and instrusive, as though he had all day, as though the lady beneath him expected her pleasure to be prolonged. He'd learned of dalliance young, in both discreet and flamboyant boudoirs; to him, making love was like superb riding-a natural bent.
Moving up, he pressed exactly where Juliana most felt the ripples of ecstasy. As her breathing changed, when the exhilaration of her senses forced her breath into small, quiet gasps and the first orgasmic quivers began, she breathlessly whispered, “I want your child.”
He almost stopped midthrust, but his own pulsing tide was already racing toward a shattering climax and the threat of hell itself couldn't have stopped it. Buried deep inside her, he poured himself into her trembling warmth, and while she sighed in abandoned pleasure, he whispered, “No.”
Juliana was infinitely more persuasive than a novice courtesan had any right to be and, before long, Bernadotte found himself upstairs in bed, sipping chilled champagne. She had a natural proclivity for pleasure, and since it was too late to retract the first offering of his lust, he decided you can only hang once.
They spent the afternoon in bed, the evening as well, and he said, “Enough,” before she did. “I'm not seventeen, puss, and that's all I can do for you today.”
Her warm tongue and soft lips put the lie to that pronouncement, several times more… but it was the phone that put an end to the hours of lovemaking. Her brother, it seemed, needed her to negotiate with one of his overwrought mistresses. When a crashing noise and a few heated comments vibrated across the wires, she agreed to come home and soothe the distraught woman.
Her driver was asleep in the car, but he came awake amiably. She had Bernadotte driven home first. “Call me,” she said when they arrived at his lodgings. She kissed him lightly on his lean, tanned cheek.
“If I stay,” he replied, brushing his fingertip gently across her bruised mouth.
“I'm going to have your baby, so you really should call.”
There was no suitable answer to her startlingly cheerful statement, so he simply said, “Thank you for a lovely day, Juliana.” Then he opened the door and walked away.
He didn't call, of course. He very sensibly left Baltimore the following day.
CHAPTER 7
T hat summer, Bernadotte found a place like home. A landscape so similar to his ancestral country that he bought five thousand acres outright. He took Kirsti's picture with him the day after the purchase was completed, lifted it to the pine and birch forests and the rocky granite hills, and said, “We're home, sweetheart. At last.”
His workmen had finished the masonry of the small country house and were beginning the interior plastering when Juliana called in August.
“Your child is due in January.” Her voice was sunny, just as he remembered it.
After a grimace of astonishment there was a short silence while he weighed his wishes against his obligations. “Where would you like the wedding?” he asked.
“Baltimore,” she said. “Do you mind if it's large?”
There was an infinitesimal pause this time, and then he answered, “No, of course not. Whatever suits you.”
“Do you have a guest list?” she inquired.
“No,” he said.
“Is Friday next all right?”
He briefly looked at the calendar on his desk near the phone, glanced around the unfinished room, thought something like this couldn't possibly be happening to him when he'd found peace at last, and quietly answered, “Friday next is fine.”
They were married on a sultry August day before every friend and relative Juliana's family had ever known. Everyone at the reception agreed that:
Juliana looked radiant-considering…
Count Fersten was remarkably charming-considering…
And if the marriage lasted a year, it would be four months longer than anyone expected.
Extra workmen were hired to speed the completion of the house and stables in order to accommodate Bernadotte's growing family. Juliana adored her husband with a young girl's worship which, while flattering, was unnerving. They were, however, extremely compatible in bed.
When Charles was born, Bernadotte was pleased to find that his wife's smothering affection was easily transferred to her son. And it was with great relief that he found he'd taken on the less demanding role of “father” in Juliana's life now that her loving attention was focused on her baby.
They outlasted the speculators in Baltimore who'd predicted a swift demise of their marriage. Juliana stayed at his country estate for three years, although she traveled often with Charles to her homes in Baltimore and Palm Beach. Despite Bernadotte's preference for his hermitage near the Canadian border, he found his new family warm and loving.
When Charles was three, Juliana decided that she and her son were better off on their own. The separation was amiable, and Bernadotte extended an open invitation to return for visits. Charles spent his summers with his father, while Bernadotte traveled to Palm Beach for Christmas each year.
Their son grew into a sturdy youngster, assured of his parents' love and support. However, he had inherited the taint of wildness bred through generations of Ferstens. In the middle of his senior year Charles was expelled from the sixth in a line of prep schools when it became clear that his boyish pranks were motivated by a dangerous compulsion for lawlessness.
After Charles's latest escapade, Juliana called Bernadotte. “He needs a man's touch now, dear,” she said. “I can't control him. Would you mind?”
He didn't mind, of course. He doted on his only child, by now a rangy, big-boned youth whose whipcord body hadn't quite caught up to his growth. So when Charles returned to his father in disgrace yet again, Bernadotte said that first evening after dinner, “I won't say you shouldn't have done all those things at school, Charles, and I understand nonconformity. But the escapades have worried your mother. I'd appreciate,” he gently admonished, “if
