With a moan of despair she grabbed hold of him and pulled him down to her, kissing him so hard that their teeth banged and ground together. He pulled away slightly, restrained her face between his hands, and kissed her his way, slower, more gently, and much more thoroughly.
She opened her legs wide and he came into her, thick and hot, as he kissed her. She wrapped her legs about him, urging him, wanting something fast, furious, and utterly obliterating. But in that he refused to oblige her.
He tormented her with long, slow strokes, teasing her nipples as he drove into her at a leisurely pace. He made her beg for each delicious thrust. He made her thrash and gyrate and wail and whimper. And only when she was wholly vanquished, desperate, convinced that she would exist forever in this state of trembling, feverish arousal, only then did he give in and pummel her to her incoherent, wild, joyous, and vocal satisfaction.
*
If only she could make time stay still. If only she need never depart the warmth of his embrace and the euphoria of their lovemaking. If only her world consisted of just this one dark room drenched in the sweet muskiness of sex, protected from tomorrow and the day after tomorrow by impregnable walls of forever-night.
Were she to have a guinea for every if-only of her life, she could pave a highway of gold from Liverpool to Newfoundland.
His breath still quick and erratic, her husband pulled away from her to lie on his back, not quite touching her. She bit her lower lip, the cold, clammy tentacles of reality already creeping up her limbs toward her heart.
He would not say anything unkind. But his silence was enough to remind her of everything she'd vowed never to do when he first returned. And all her declarations of love for Freddie, were they no more than words, and empty words at that?
“I called on you at your hotel in Copenhagen,” he said.
It took her an entire minute to decipher what he'd said. And even then she didn't understand. “You . . . you didn't leave a card?”
“You'd already left, for the Margrethe.”
A blaze of elation swallowed her, only to be replaced by a bleak disbelief, an impotent amazement at Fate's capriciousness. “I didn't catch the Margrethe,” she said, dazed. “It'd already sailed when I arrived at the harbor.”
“What?”
She'd never heard him say “What?” before. He was too perfect for that; he'd never failed to use the more correct and more polite “Pardon?” Up until this moment.
“Where did you go, then?”
“Back to the same hotel. I left only the next day.”
He laughed, with bitter incredulity. “Did the hotel clerk not tell you that a fool came for you, with flowers?”
It was like finding out she was with child, then bleeding all over the place three weeks later. Only it was happening all in one searing moment. “The day clerk must have been gone by the time I decided I needed a place to stay for the night.”
He'd come for her. For whatever reason, he'd come for her. And they'd missed each other, as if Shakespeare himself had scripted their story on a day of particular misanthropy.
“What flowers did you bring?” she asked, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.
“Some . . .” His voice faltered, something else she'd never heard from him. “Some blue hydrangeas. They were already wilted.”
Blue hydrangeas. Her favorite. Suddenly she felt like crying.
“I wouldn't have minded.” She kept talking, to keep the tears at bay. “I was so upset I went to Felix as soon as I came ashore in England, only to find out he'd gotten married during the time I was away. I made a fool and a nuisance of myself anyway.”
He made a sound halfway between a snort and a grunt. “I almost hate to ask.”
“You've nothing to worry about. He didn't succumb to my advances. I came to my senses. End of story.”
“I came to my senses too, after a while,” he said slowly. “I convinced myself that what was done between us could not be undone, could never be undone.”
“And there is no such thing as a fresh start. Not really,” she concurred, her tears welling, the room a dark blur.
For the first time in her life, she saw exactly what she'd thrown away when she decided to have him by means fair or foul. For the very first time she truly understood, deep in her bones, that she'd not saved him but wronged him by consigning to him all the ability of a box turtle to make his own choices. She had been— just as she hadn't wanted to admit—impetuous, shortsighted, and selfish.
“I should not have done what I did. I'm sorry.”
“I wasn't exactly a paragon of rectitude myself, was I? I should have had the frankness to confront you, however unhappy that encounter would have been. Instead, I retreated to subterfuge and confused vengeance with justice.”
She laughed bitterly. For two intelligent people, they'd certainly made all the wrong choices that could have been made. And then some.
“I wish—” She stopped herself. What was the point? They'd missed their chance already.