A missing scene for after Duke & Anna got engaged the second time, at the beginning of the L'Orlean storyline. This would fall after the clip "Duke, Anna and Camellia 26": .com/watch?v=WBwl9lLq0co&feature=related
14 February 1987
Anna entered the country cottage, Duke following behind her. She stopped just over the threshold, taking it all in. Everything looked just the same, and yet it was all different.
Duke set down the overnight bags and stepped close to Anna, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. "What are you thinkin' about?" he murmured into her hair, breathing deeply of the scent of her, trying to shake off his apprehension about the pensive look on her face.
The last time they'd been here, together, Anna remembered, this place had been a prison—a torture chamber. For both of them. She'd been his jailer, he'd been a criminal, and this place, their haven, had been corrupted by their thwarted longing for each other. It had been a torment to be so close to him, confined with him, and yet to forbid herself to touch him, to kiss him, to be held in his arms and to lay with him in their bed, here in the one place in the world that had been their shared refuge.
That was over now, she reminded herself. Somehow, their love had survived his lies, his confessions, his punishment. They were free to be together. She must not spoil it.
"I'm glad we're here," she finally answered him.
"Me, too," he sighed, relieved. "It's time we got away, just the two of us. We can finally put everything behind us. The mob. My sentence. L'Orlean."
Standing behind her, Duke did not see the fear that flickered across Anna's face at the mention of Angus's home, with its secret tragedies and its fortune teller predicting disaster. He knew only that she wrapped her arms around herself and tightly grasped his elbows, pulling herself still closer into his embrace. "This is a new beginning for us," he continued. "A wonderful beginning."
"Yes." She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to believe him.
He kissed her cheek before releasing his hold on her, and she twisted the sparkling new diamond on her left hand.
"I'll go get the groceries," Duke said. "D'you want to unpack? While I make dinner?"
"Yes. That sounds perfect. I'll open some wine." She took off her overcoat and brown cardigan as Duke headed back out to the car.
After they'd eaten, sitting at the dining table, Anna was flushed with nerves and Beaujolais and the fire that Duke had built into a roaring conflagration that had prompted him to shed the crewneck sweater he'd worn layered over his plaid button-down shirt. "The last time we were here…," Anna began, before trailing off.
"I know. I'm sorry. I know what I've put you through, and Robin. And I know I'll never be able to make that up to you, Anna. I'm only grateful that you've given me the chance to try."
"I hated it, having you in custody. Trying to pretend that you were just another prisoner."
"I didn't mind. I mean, I hated the rift that I'd caused between us. But I'm always happy to be with you, to spend time with you, whatever the circumstances."
"Oh, even when I'm holding a gun on you?"
"You were doing your job, Anna. And I knew you would never use it. Though I didn't expect you would fall asleep with it in your lap."
Anna squirmed in retrospective embarrassment, looked down at her hands twisting in her lap, and flushed even redder.
"That gave me hope," Duke continued.
"It did?"
"It proved that, deep down, you still trusted me. You're far too good a cop, Anna-far too smart a woman-to let down your guard and put yourself at risk." Duke hoped with every fiber of his being that he was right to have confidence in Anna's vigilance. The most harrowing moment of his incarceration, he could not forget, was neither the attempt on his life nor the deadly bargain that Angus made. Rather, it was the realization that no matter what he or his father did, Anna and Robin were still targets. The mob had a long memory, and there was no honor among thieves, but he'd finally truly understood that the woman he loved, the chief of police, had herself made many enemies of vicious and vengeful men. Each time the guards escorted him from his job in the warden's office to his cell, he'd had to pass through the general population, where the threats against Anna were like icy, jagged knives to his heart.
"Hey, Lavery, I know what you're going through. I got ten years, all 'cause that bitch Devane fucked me, too. Tell her when I get out, I'll return the favor."
"Psst. Mr. Big. How's your pig girlfriend? She taste like bacon, man? You know I could make her squeal. Like a stuck pig. I'd stick it to her real good. 'Squee! Squeeeeeeee!' Ha ha ha ha!"
It had taken every ounce of his self-restraint not to strike out at those slime. The only thing that had held him back was the knowledge that to inflict the beatings those lowlifes so richly deserved would surely mean he would be denied parole and kept behind bars, where he was powerless to protect Anna. As it was, he knew he would never again spend a restful night unless she were there next to him, where he could watch over her and keep her safe from harm.
Anna knew none of this. But she looked into Duke's eyes and recognized a man who wanted to be by her side, who would never walk away. He was right: She did trust—no, she depended on—the fact that he would not turn his back and leave her, alone, without a backward glance. "You said you'd never run from me," she recalled with awe.
"And I won't." The vulnerability he heard in her voice strengthened his resolve to be with her always, to treasure her forever. "Armed or not, you've captured my heart. I'm still your willing prisoner."
Anna looked at him with dark fire in her eyes. She leaned toward him, wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, and pulled his face to hers. Their eyes searched each other before she kissed him fervently. Running his hands down her back, he slowly rose from his chair, and she followed him. His hands found her hips, but before he could pull her against him, she began to step backward, across the room, toward the bed, pulling him along with her. Her hands slid to the buttons of his shirt, unfastening them as she continued leading their slow progress. As she began to pull his shirt tails free of the waistband of his pants, she bumped up against the edge of the raised bed. They broke off their kiss long enough to share a soft laugh, and then Duke was leaning over her, seeking her mouth again, bending her backward toward the mattress. She planted her palms flat against his warm bare chest and pushed him upright. "Uh-uh-uh," she scolded gently, shaking her head "no" and biting her bottom lip. "Patience."
Thus rebuked, Duke contented himself with stroking his fingertips up the side of her upturned face and sliding them through her hair. He reached to unfasten the clip at the crown of her head, and her hair tumbled down in a soft, dark cloud around her face. It obscured her expression as she turned from him toward the shelf at the head of the bed, where she picked up a matchbox. While her hands were occupied with sliding open the box, tapping out a matchstick, and striking it, Duke endeavored to equalize their states of undress, tugging the hem of her cotton turtleneck out of her belted skirt. Anna, meanwhile, held the match to the wick of a candle in a rustic tin—it flared and released a seductive scent of sandalwood.
She set down the candle on the shelf, turned back toward Duke, and permitted him to peel her shirt off over her head, raising her arms to assist in its removal. He swept her voluminous disheveled hair back off her shoulders and bent to kiss her neck. She finished stripping him of his shirt and then unbuckled his belt and quickly pulled it from its loops with a slithering sound. In another few moments they were both down to their underclothes. "These too," Anna smiled, depriving him of his boxers.
"A willing prisoner, you say?" she asked.
"That's right." Duke put his hands up to shoulder level, palms forward, in a gesture of surrender.
Anna took his hands in hers, lowered them to his waist, and began to wrap Duke's belt around his wrists.
"You left the cuffs at the office?" Duke asked with eyebrows raised.
"This isn't official police business," Anna smiled. "It's personal." She punctuated the statement by pulling the leather tight through the buckle and securing the prong through the hole.
Anna backed up the steps to the bed and knelt atop it. Still holding fast to the end of the belt, she kissed Duke. Striving to get closer to her, he climbed the steps of his own volition, until she pulled him onto the mattress and fell with him onto the pillows.
Rolling Duke onto his back, Anna began to kiss his beloved body that she'd missed so much for too long. Their moments alone together had been all too brief of late, she thought. She was still so relieved to have him back, sound and whole, after the nightmare of his paralysis and incarceration. She relished the rare pleasure of touching him, tasting him, teasing him without the irresistible distraction of his questing hands. As her mouth burned a trail along his flesh, Duke felt her hair brushing over him like a hundred thousand feathers. His fingers clutched at the streaming tendrils as he silently cursed the frustration of being unable to freely touch her.
Having kissed him from head to toes and back again, Anna tasted his mouth once more. This kiss, at least, he could—and would—control: He sucked her tongue into his mouth, twined his own around it, thrusted and parried with her until he elicited her soft moan. Anna reached behind herself and unhooked her bra before breaking off this kiss. Then she reached over his head, putting her breasts tantalizingly close to him, and smiled as he groaned at their remaining just out of reach of his lips even as he lifted his head from the pillow.
When she brought her arms back again, Duke saw that the burning candle was in her hands. She straddled his thighs, held the candle a foot above his chest, and tilted the tin. Duke sucked in his breath sharply as a stream of hot massage oil poured onto his skin. Anna replaced the candle on the shelf and began to smooth the oil over his body with her hands. Her two palms slid up his breastbone to his throat and then each veered off to massage a shoulder. She spent a long time methodically rubbing him in all the right ways, her own body growing slick above him as she worked at the pleasant task.
When she'd stroked all of him down to and including the soles of his feet—with the deliberate exception of the spot where he most wanted her touch—she paused to survey her handiwork.
God, he was beautiful, she thought. His handsome, chiseled face never failed to take her breath away, and his long, hard, lean body was just as much a work of art. Looking at him, with his eyes blazing with passion for her, his nostrils flaring, his oiled skin shining like burnished bronze in the firelight, she thought he seemed too good to be true.
She immediately rued the thought, for the doubt that quickly followed: Perhaps he WAS too good to be true. While he'd been in hospital and then in prison, she'd thought nothing else would matter as soon as she got him home. How wrong she'd been. There were still so many obstacles to their happiness: His parole. His $100,000 fine. And, the worst, his past in L'Orlean, that he so stubbornly continued to hide. How awful must that truth be, that this man who trusted her not to shoot him, who trusted her enough to be as vulnerable as she'd made him at this moment, still refused to share it with her, even after all they had been through?
"Duke."
"Anna…. My love…" His voice was deep and thick with desire.
"Tell me." She finally wrapped her hands around the stiffened base of him, and he throbbed at her touch, undermining her resolve.
"I love you, Anna. I want you so badly, woman."
"You do?"
"You know I do."
"Tell me," she repeated, looking in his eyes as she bowed her head and licked the liquid pearl off the tip of him. His whole body was rigid and straining upward toward her.
"Anything." In that moment, his mind insensible of everything but need for her, he meant it.
"About L'Orlean."
Nothing had been farther from his thoughts than that, with Anna so maddeningly close. He struggled to even recall the secret and why it was important that he keep it. "Anna…" His voice was raw.
"Plea-se." Her voice broke and her eyes welled, and it was almost Duke's undoing, as she slid her body upward along his, her breasts skimming over him, sending a thrill between their bodies. He was pressed against her cleavage, her belly, the wet heat at the apex of her thighs, where only the lace of her panties came between them.
"I can't…." He'd never been so tempted in all his life as by this lovely succubus looking witchy in the flicker of light and shadow from the fire, her eyes black as midnight, her skin glowing pale as moonlight. He marveled that the WSB and DVX had not fully utilized the weapon they'd had in Anna Devane. "It's not my secret to tell…." His promise to Angus meant nothing in this moment. He was the only person, now, who knew the secret. Camellia had no memory of it. He was tired of carrying this burden alone…. What harm could it do, to share it with Anna?
But he well knew the harm that could come. He remembered the hard, calculating gaze of Victor Jerome when he'd met that ruthless mob boss at Angus's table. If that man ever learned what had become of his eldest son and heir, Evan, whom Camellia had killed in self-defense and whom Angus had insisted they consign to the cold, deep waters of the lake in L'Orlean…. Jerome would take vengeance. Jerome would believe that his loss gave him license to take that which Duke valued most. He would show no mercy. Not for Anna. Not even for little Robin. "Please don't ask me to do this, Anna. I want to, now. Heaven help me, I want to. But I can't."
She heard in his voice, saw in his face, felt in the tense heat of his body that he was telling her the truth. She recognized his conflicted agony, having felt it herself once, in another lifetime. That struggle was something they both knew; it was one of the reasons she understood him, loved him, wanted him with the same helpless desperation he was showing her now.
His bound hands grasped at her fingers; he squeezed her hand tightly, and she felt the pressure of the ring he had put there just that afternoon. "Anna, I love you. I want to marry you. We'll spend the rest of our lives together. That's all that matters. Nothing else matters, does it?"
It was ironic, she thought, that even when she'd sought to ensure that his hands were tied, she was still powerless to resist him. He was right: Nothing mattered more to her than marrying him. She wanted to marry him more than she wanted to know the secret. She wanted to marry him more than she wanted anything in the world. "Oh, Duke," she sighed, and leaned forward to kiss him, her hair falling in thick, dark curtains around both of their faces, shutting out the world.