They walked along Clichy, not entwined but close enough to touch, Robbie Carmichael’s shoulder brushing hers, looking straight ahead without talking. Awareness kept them leashed together, creating a tension that heightened with every step. On the corner of steeply rising Rue des Martyrs, Sylvie stopped. ‘This is where I live.’
‘So this is goodbye, then,’ he said.
She thought he looked disappointed, but she could not be sure. She did not want to say goodbye, of that she was sure. ‘It does not have to be,’ Sylvie said, speaking before she could think, ‘if that is not what you want?’
He laughed mirthlessly at that. ‘I’d have thought that what I want was perfectly obvious when we were dancing.’ He tangled his fingers in her hair, where the chic Parisian stylist had cropped it at her nape. Even after more than a year, Sylvie missed the weight of her tresses, could not get used to having her neck so exposed. ‘You are very beautiful.’
His voice was low. His breath smelled of wine, but he did not look or sound in the least bit drunk. Desire warred with caution, but she was so tired of being careful, and it was so long since she had felt anything but numbness. ‘I want you to know, I am not in the habit of doing this sort of thing,’ she said urgently, because it was important he understood, even if she would never see him again.
‘You told me,
ma belle
, and I believed you. I am not in the habit, either. At least not since— But I do want
you
. I want you very, very much.’
His words should have shocked, but she found them exhilarating. Her heart was beating erratically as they hurried along the Rue des Martyrs to the doorway next to the
pharmacie
. Up one steep flight of stairs and then another, where her fingers trembled as she unlocked the door to her apartment. Plenty of time to regret her impulsive decision, to call herself a fool for bringing a stranger here to her sanctuary. Not one of those thoughts crossed her mind.
The room was cold, the fire long since gone out. That was why she was shaking; it was the cold. She switched on the electric lamp, which as usual flickered alarmingly before casting an uncertain glow. She caught her breath in the dim light as he threw off his greatcoat and came towards her. Then his lips touched hers, and heat, neither warm nor gentle but raw and painful, seared them as they kissed.
All the pent-up passion from the dance floor, from the walk home, from the past two years since war had destroyed the life she knew, enveloped her, consumed her, turned her into a wild selfish creature whose only thought was release. His kisses were desperate, urgent, his tongue warring with hers. It was not a battle, Sylvie realised, but a race.
Her coat joined his on the floor. His hands were in her hair, on the bare skin at the nape of her neck, sliding down her spine to cup her bottom, pulling her tight against him, so tight that her feet left the ground and he staggered back against the wall. His passion was every bit as all enveloping as hers. The slash of colour across his pale cheeks, the harsh rise and fall of his rapid breathing, would have betrayed him even without the solid length of his shaft pressed between her thighs. His eyes clashed with hers, the pupils dilated. ‘Too fast,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘Too fast,’ he repeated, releasing his hold on her so that her feet slid back onto solid ground.
He was frowning down at her as if she were a book he had to study. He was a man women would swoon over, in another life. That was what she’d thought when she first saw him. A man who would put a woman’s pleasure first. Who would not rush. She set about undoing the buttons of his tunic. ‘Not fast enough,’ she said, tugging it open, and flattening her palm over the broad expanse of chest covered only by his undershirt, over the dip of his rib cage, the tautness of his belly. It rippled under her touch. Down, to the rigid length of him tight against the wool of his trousers. ‘Not nearly fast enough.’
* * *
Robbie bit back a moan as the blood rushed to his groin. He didn’t think he’d ever been this hard. He didn’t think he’d ever felt this overpowering, overwhelming rush to be there, inside her, as quickly as possible. Not like this. It shouldn’t be like this. Before—but he would not think of before. Or after. Or anything except her hands on him, her mouth on him.
He shrugged out of his tunic and let it fall beside their coats. He kissed her, reeling at the way her mouth responded to his with equal fervour. She tasted exactly as he’d known she would taste: sweet, sinful, luscious. He cupped her breast with one hand, her bottom with the other. Such curves. Such beautiful female flesh, and such desire, as furiously ravenous as his own.
She was panting, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed. Her nipples were hard beneath the filmy layers of her clothing. He bent his head to take one in his mouth, making her shudder.
She tugged at his undershirt. He pulled it over his head, then fumbled with the fastenings of her gown. Before, he had always made a performance of removing his lover’s clothing. This was nothing like before. He tugged and yanked and she wriggled and pulled, and her gown fell away, and she stood before him in her shoes and stockings, in her garters and knickers and camisole looking so much more beautiful than he could ever have imagined.
The camisole was white, trimmed with satin ribbon, buttoned down the front. Her stockings were silk. He burrowed his face in the soft mounds of her breasts above her underwear, running his hands down her spine, over the curves of her buttocks, then round, to cup the curves of her breasts. She shivered. He undid the buttons, shaking now, taking a dark pink hard nipple into his mouth and sucking greedily, drawing a harsh moan from her that sounded like an echo of his own.
Her hands fumbled with the fastenings of his trousers as he sucked again, circling the other nipple with his thumb. He cursed inwardly, remembering the complexities of his army dress, and let her go, cursing aloud as he struggled with trousers and puttees and boots, finally kicking off his own underwear, conscious of her watching him all the time, blatantly studying his body, feeling a triumphant, ridiculous, wholly male pride as her eyes widened when he finally stood before her, hard and more than ready.
He should find the bedroom. The bed. His last coherent thought before she touched him, wrapping her hand around him and kissing him hard. ‘Now,’ she said.
It was an order, and Robbie had been trained to never disobey orders. Pulling her onto the floor, out of sight of the uncurtained windows, he rolled her onto her back, tugged her knickers down and thrust his fingers inside her.
* * *
Sylvie arched with pleasure. His mouth covered hers, and she kissed him, thrusting her tongue deep inside, her hands reaching for the satiny thickness of his manhood. She stroked him as he stroked her, sliding in and out and over the slick, throbbing heat between her legs. She thrust herself up shamelessly against his hand. ‘More,’ she gasped, ‘please, more,’ and heard him laugh, a guttural, innately male sound that sent shivers of pleasure up her spine. He tore his mouth away from hers to lick her nipples, first one then the other, still stroking. She tensed, then unable to control it any longer, her climax shook her, threw her, rocked her, making her cry out in wild abandon.
And it still wasn’t enough. She pulled at him, tugged his shoulders, moaning his name, moaning, ‘Now, now, now.’ He rolled away from her, fumbling in his uniform, quickly pulling on a
préservatif
. Instead of pushing her onto her back, he pulled her on top of him.
The slide, the slow, delicious slide of his thickness into her, sent frissons of delight through her body. He was staring up at her, eyes wide but unseeing, his face rigid, biting his lip, struggling for control. She liked that. Sylvie tightened around him, and his moan drew a shudder from her. She lifted herself, then slid back down, drawing him in farther. She held him tight inside her and he tilted up under her. She lifted herself again to slide back down, and he thrust at the same time, making her gasp, and then it took over, the urge to climb again, the compulsion to reach that place, that peak, there. She arched her back, shuddering with delight at the way the movement slid him deeper inside her, and then he pulled her towards him and lifted her, and they found a new rhythm. Fast and hard. Until the swell of him threw her over the edge where her falling made him cry out, too, as he pulsed inside her, and she collapsed onto his chest and he held her there with arms as tight as steel bands, and they lay slick with sweat, breathing. Just breathing.
* * *
Robbie opened his eyes extremely reluctantly, dragging himself back from the velvet dark place that cocooned his sated body and kept his weary mind blank. He felt heavy, weighted down, yet curiously light-headed. He had never in his life experienced sex like that. He felt as if he had been wrung out, emptied and cast on the shore by a tempest. Carnal, it had been, and completely without finesse. He barely recognised himself. He ought to be ashamed. Except the woman lying over him, the lush, warm, beautiful woman lying over him, had been every bit as carnal, her desires every bit as raw and primal as his own.
He was not ashamed, but he was embarrassed. And confused. What on earth had come over him? Not once since he had found himself at the front had he desired this. Not ever, in his whole life, had he been so completely carried away. He felt as if he’d been swept along in a rip tide. And now that it was over he was afraid, because to his chagrin he found himself wanting her again. His hands rested on the curve of her spine. Her breasts were flattened against his chest. Her face was burrowed into his shoulder. The scent of their coupling mingled with her perfume. He was still inside her, spent, though not wholly spent, it seemed. What kind of an animal had he become?
Robbie began to ease himself up, lifting her away from him at the same time. She blinked, opened her eyes and stared at him as if he were a stranger, something of his own shock reflected in her face. ‘It’s very late. I should go,’ he said, the first thing that came into his head. ‘I’ve had my fun’ was how it sounded. Sylvie flushed. He opened his mouth to retract, to explain, then closed it again, because even if he could have, there was no point.
‘Very late. You’re right.’ She jumped to her feet. He had a brief moment to admire her curves, a brief moment when his traitorous body clamoured for her again, and then she grabbed her coat and pulled it on, and he covered himself, mortified, with his own coat that she threw at him, obviously wanting him gone. Which was exactly what he wanted, so he had no right at all to feel rejected.
‘There is a bathroom through there,’ she said, pointing to a door in the far side of the room. ‘You can...’
He nodded, grabbing his clothes, fighting the urge to pull her back into his arms, which was patently the last thing she wanted. The bathroom was a small, meanly partitioned room lit by a naked bulb. It was spartan and freezing, but pristine. He washed and dressed hurriedly, fighting the sadness that was enveloping him. She had not used him, certainly no more than he had used her. It was not her he wanted again, but that feeling, far too short-lived, the velvet dark cloak of oblivion. No doubt that was what she, too, had sought. He had given her what she wanted, just as she had given him what
he
wanted. Only she had had enough and he had not. He tightened his puttees viciously and stamped his feet into his boots. It would have been wiser not to give in to temptation. Much wiser.
Checking his face in the mirror, surprised as ever to see the reflection of a gaunt, hardened soldier staring back at him, Robbie grimaced. He couldn’t regret something that amazing. Smoothing his raggedly cut hair back from his brow, his hand went automatically to his scar, and he noticed that for the first time he could remember it was not throbbing. His headache was all but gone. When he got back to his hotel, he might even sleep. Maybe.
Closing the bathroom door behind him he found Sylvie gazing out of the window, still dressed only in her coat. She had removed her stockings. Her bare ankles and feet looked both vulnerable and erotic. Then she turned to face him and he recognised her smile as one of his own, fixed, rigid, forced. She blushed, tightening the belt of her coat around her waist. ‘
Pardon
, I feel a little embarrassed by my behaviour just now.’
Robbie crossed the room to join her at the window. ‘It is I who should apologise. I did not— I am not usually so...’ He paused, for lack of an appropriate word to describe his behaviour, and grimaced. ‘Honestly, this isn’t like me. I suppose—I suppose it’s just been such a long time.’
She said nothing. He wanted her all over again, only this time he wanted to take his time, and that was what scared him more than anything else about tonight. ‘I should go,’ Robbie said roughly, wanting her to contradict him, and yet annoyed that he wanted her to do just that.
Outside, the night was fading into the dawn. Across the street, the shutters on the
boulangerie
were noisily raised. He waited for her to ask him to stay, wanting her to and desperately not wanting her to. She stared up at him for a long moment, then turned away to gaze out of the window again.
‘Bonne nuit,’
she said.
He had never been dismissed before. Lovemaking had always been a play in three acts, beginning with a flirtatious prelude, ending with post-coital languor, sleep or a repeat performance. But this had not been lovemaking, it had been sex. Base instinct, a coupling with no other purpose than relief. Robbie’s mood turned from grey to black as he kissed the cheek she offered instead of her lips, picked up his cap, turned to go, then changed his mind, because he would not let this cold, businesslike goodbye be his lasting memory of her. He caught her roughly to him and kissed her softly, drinking in her sweetness, capturing it to remember her by, before letting her go.
‘Au revoir,’
he said, and left quickly without looking back.
Chapter Three
T
he road ahead was rutted, muddy and swarming with refugees. She recognised many of them. The school at which Papa was headmaster was the sole one in the town. She herself had taught many of the younger children who were clinging to their parents, balancing on the wheelbarrows and carts laden with whatever scant possessions they had been able to rescue. Little enough, since the bigger carts and all the horses had been requisitioned by the military. Sylvie’s suitcase held her clothes and some treasured books. On her back, knotted in a sheet, was Maman’s silver tea set, the family photograph album and the only practical items, the coffee grinder and the copper coffee pot. The spout was digging into her shoulder. Her mother’s bundle contained the matching stoneware cups, along with who knew what from her store cupboard. On the cart that Papa and her brother, Henri, were pushing was piled an assortment of clothes and whatever else they’d been able to throw onto it in the four hours since they had been given notice to quit the town.