Simply Magic

Sensation stabbed like a knife up into her throat and behind her nose, down through her womb and along her inner thighs.

It was the moment at which she abandoned self-deception.

This was no ordinary, innocent friendship.

It never had been.

She could not bear the thought of tomorrow. But it was not just because she would be losing a friend. She would also be leaving behind the man with whom she had tumbled headlong and hopelessly in love.

Hopelessly being a key word.

Hopelessly. Without all hope. Without any future.

There was only now.

He lifted his head and brought his mouth close to hers again. But instead of kissing her, he gazed deep into her eyes, his own heavy with a desire that clearly matched her own. It was not hard to interpret that look even though she had not seen it on a man’s face before.

“Stop me now,” he murmured, “or heaven help us both.”

Stop?

No! Oh, no. If there was no future, if there was only now, she would not have it snatched away from her-forever. She would have the whole of it.

It was not rational thought, of course, with which she considered his words. She was past rational thought-but had no experience with anything else. Her mind did not even touch upon virtue or morality. Even less did it touch upon consequences or the very real dangers inherent in not stopping him.

There was only now.

Now he was here with her.

Tomorrow she would be gone, and the day after so would he.

“Susanna?” he whispered again.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Please don’t stop.”

He did not stop. He turned her onto her back, kissing her, baring her other breast and fondling her with expert hands and lips while she lay beneath him, bewilderment and desire and sheer physical sensation tumbling together through every vein and bone and nerve ending in her body.

And then he lifted the hem of her dress, drawing it all the way up to her hips and disposing of undergarments until she could feel the grass against her bare flesh. He fumbled with the waist flap of his pantaloons and brought himself over between her legs, which he parted with his own before sliding his hands firmly beneath her to cushion her against the hardness of the ground.

She knew what happened. With her intellect, she knew the process-or some of it anyway. She knew about penetration and the spilling of the seed. It had always seemed to her that it must be both painful and embarrassing, though she had always wanted to experience it anyway.

There was pain. He came into her slowly but firmly, pressing past the barrier of her virginity until he was deeply embedded in her.

There was no embarrassment.

She had not known how large he would feel, how hard, how deep.

And she had known nothing of what happened between penetration and the spilling of the seed.

What happened was pain and pleasure and shock and satisfaction all rolled into one. Pain as he withdrew and thrust over and over again past the soreness of her newly opened womanhood. Pleasure because it was more wonderful, more exhilarating, than any other sensation she had ever experienced. Shock because she had not expected such a deep and vigorous and prolonged invasion of her body. Satisfaction because now, before it was too late, he was her lover. Because she would always be able to remember him as her lover.

Despite the pain and the shock, she wanted it never to end. She braced her feet on the ground, feeling the supple leather of his boots along the insides of her legs as she did so, wrapped her arms about him, closed her eyes, and allowed herself to feel every painful, powerful, wonderful stroke of his body into hers, to hear every labored breath they both drew, to smell his cologne and the very essence of his maleness, to understand that at last, for once in her life, she was celebrating her sexuality-with a man she loved.

She would not be sorry afterward.

Surely she would not.

She would not even think of afterward.

But it came anyway.

His rhythm quickened and his strokes deepened until he held still in her, every muscle tense, and then sighed and relaxed even as she felt the gush of a greater heat deep inside.

She swallowed against a moment’s disappointment that now it was over.

Forever.

It did not matter. It would not matter. She would always remember.

He drew free of her and rolled off her, careful to lower her skirt over her legs and lift her bodice over her breasts as he did so. He lay on his back beside her after setting his own clothing to rights, one arm flung over his eyes, the other hand palm-down over the back of hers as it lay on the grass between them.

It seemed to her that he slept for a few minutes.

How could anyone possibly sleep after that? But he had, of course, expended a great deal of energy.

Deep inside her she harbored his seed.

The beginnings of rational thought niggled at the edges of her mind.

“Susanna,” he said sleepily, while she lay with closed eyes, reliving every moment of what had just happened.

She turned her head to look at him. He was tousled, slightly flushed, impossibly handsome.

“Come away with me,” he said.

“What?” An irrational hope blossomed for a moment.

“Let’s go away,” he said. “Why say good-bye when neither of us wants it to happen? Let’s go to North Wales. Let’s see Mount Snowdon together and go walking over the hills and along the beaches. Let’s do it. Let’s run free.”

And the horrible thing was, she thought as she stared at him, that he meant it. And that for two pins she would have cast caution and good sense to the winds and agreed to go with him.

“And afterward?” she said.

“Afterward?” He laughed softly. “To the devil with afterward. We will think of that when the time comes. I won’t ever leave you destitute, though, I promise. Come with me. Let’s do it.”

Rational thought came crashing back from wherever it had been hiding and took up residence in her conscious mind again.

She would be his mistress.

They would have a wild, doubtless glorious fling together, and then he would pay her off. Because he was a basically decent and kind man, he would see to it that she did not starve after he discarded her.

She could be his mistress.

His whore.

“I like my life as it is,” she said. “I love the school and my work there and my pupils and my fellow teachers. I have to go back tomorrow.”

“You do not have to do anything,” he said.

“You are right.” She sat up and straightened her dress as best she could with