Captivated

engorged bulb of his crown as he thrust into her other opening.

The pleasure of having her like this, of feeling her body at the same time that he felt his own body, was more than he could have imagined. Thoughts and images flashed before his eyes as if he was a dying man.

The Indian sun rising over the mountain and turning the sand blood red. Crimson-stained drumsticks quivering inside thesepoy's body. Abigail's tears as he recounted to her the twenty-two-year-old story. His own voice,Ifound out that I did not want to die without knowing what it is like to lose myselfinside a woman. Abigail's voice,Icame to say good-bye.

Who did you come to say good-bye to?

My dreams, Robert.

Without warning, Abigail's body tightened, locking fingers and manhood inside her. 'Oh, God, Robert. Robert, I can't stand it.' Her voice was agonized. 'Robert, please, God, take it out, do something, more, Robert,Robert '

'Promise me, Abigail.' Robert barely recognized his voice in the darknessit was a savage snarl punctuated with labored gasps and the slap of his skin against hers while thesepoy's whistling breath echoed in the ravine.

'Robert, please'

'Without your fantasies and your erotica you will be just like any other lady. And we would never have had last night and today. We would not be doing this, now. Would you give that up, too?'

'No, never!' she gasped, with pain, with pleasure, it no longer mattered, she was his and she was here to give up everything that had made his life bearable and hewas not going to let her do it.

'Promise me you won't give up your dreams!'

'Oh, God, God, Ipromise, Robert'

'Then let go.' Robert gritted his teeth. 'This is what kept me alive, Abigail,this dream. Come for me. I want you to feel what I feel when you come for me. I want you to take the pain and turn it into pleasure. I want you to comenow.'

In a quick motion he reversed the synchronization of their fingers and his penis, filling her simultaneously, faster, harder, deeper until there was no Abigail or Robert, only one body, one heartbeat, and it all centered there where their flesh was joined. Suddenly Abigail's entire body opened, taking their fingers and his manhood inside her more deeply than he would have thought humanly possible before clamping down in orgasm. Her muscles contracted around them, around him, until, with a muffled groan, he buried his face into the nape of her neck and came and came and came.

And knew that the storm had irrevocably changed his life.

Abigail had taken his pain and turned it into heart-rending pleasure.

Abigail had given back to him his soul.

chapter 7

Abigail awoke to a warm flood of memories.

Robert kissing her between her legs. Robert buried so deeply inside her that they were one body. The taste of Robert on her tongue; the sound of his shock when she had shared that taste with him. Robert kneeling before her while she read to him fromThePearl. Robert's manhood pulsing against their entwined fingers while all around them her own flesh pulsed with the same aching need.

They should invoke shame, those memories. After all, she was a modern nineteenth-century woman raised to have a healthy aversion to human sexuality. At the very least, those memories should invoke embarrassment.

But they did not.

They reminded her that, whether she be a staid spinster or a genteel lady or a wanton seductress, she was first and foremost a woman.

Do you take me, Abigail?

I take you, Robert.

For the first time in her life she was thankful for her erotica. She would need every bit of knowledge she could gain if she was going to spend the rest of her life making Robert forget.

Smiling, she reached out a hand.

Only to encounter cold sheets, slightly rumpled where Robert had lain beside her.

Abigail's eyelids shot open… to sunshine. And the shriek of a gull.

The storm was over.

Reality was sharp, invasive, words Robert had said in passion, words he had said in passing.

For the duration of the storm, let us simply be Abigail and Robert.

As long as the storm lasts, your body, your needs, your fantasieseverything you haveis mine.

For the duration of the storm you are mywoman.

She scrambled up in bed, ridiculously hoping that perhaps Robert was in the hip bath or kneeling in front of the stove, putting wood into it, anything,but please, God, don't let him be gone.

But there was no place to hidethe cottage was empty. His clothes, which had been draped over the chair by the stove, were gone. In their place hung her faded green cotton dress and white silk drawers.

Abigail closed her eyes against the sunshine filling the cottage.

Like the storm, Robert was gone.

Suddenly Abigail could not bear the sheets that smelled of him and of her. She scrambled out of bed, wincing at the feel of the engorged sponge inside her and the greasy traces of butter between her buttocks.

She hurt. Between the legs. Her bottom. Her breasts. Her lips. Everywhere he had touched her, she hurt.

Yet everywhere she looked, the cabin carried a part of him.

The fire in the stove. The hip bath on the floor by the sink. The cupboard barring the window.ThePearl, lying on the floor.

How could he leave her?

She had promised him! Promised him that she would not give up

Her dreams.

Outside the cabin, a horse neighed; it was accompanied by the jingle of reins.

Robert.

Abigail raced to the door, heart pounding.

It did not matter that her hair hung wild and tangled down her back. It did not matter that she was two weeks and five days shy of turning thirty.

The only thing that mattered was that Robert had not left.

His horse had thrown him, he had said yesterday. Duty-bound soldier that he was, he had left the cottage to find his horse, and having found it

'Be ye decent, Miss Abigail? I've come to clean fer ye. And I've brought more food fer ye and yer mister.'

Abigail felt as if she had been shot by a bullet.

Or stabbed by a pair of drumsticks.

Robert said he had killed. That he would kill again.

And he had.

He just had not stayed around this time to see the look of surprise in the victim's eyes.

Through the door she could hear the ocean waves gently washing the beach. The lonely sea gull shrilled in the sky above.

Straightening her shoulders, she called out, 'Give me a few minutes, Mrs. Thomas. I need to'

She closed her eyes against the truth.

She had had her two nights of passion and she would have no more.

Ineed to cleanse from myself the old life and step into the new.

Hurriedly she laid out the clothes she had arrived inbustle, corset, chemise, petticoats, stockings, garters, dress.Tears.