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They sat like that for a while, fingers pressed together. She resisted the urge, though it was quite overwhelming, to climb into his lap and let him hold her. She wasn't normally so resistant of what her heart was telling her to do – not with him anyway – but she couldn't give in, for fear that he might think that they did not need to discuss what had occurred. She knew she may be being a little simplistic in that regard but she couldn't risk that she might choose never to mention it again because from the moment she did crawl into his lap, she would just be grateful that she was there. She might forgive him everything, just for his warmth and security.
It made her shameful with need. So she resisted, instead she locked their fingers together. When had she become so ridiculously fragile? She looked down to their joined hands; olive skin, pressed against pale white. They were, she had always known, quite different people.
He breathed out into the silence and she knew he was about to say something.
"Where are you staying?"
She turned to look at him for the first time because his voice had startled her. He said it as if he was biting it back. His jaw was tightened, his face solidly unemotional.
"The one we stayed in the last time we were here. L'Hotel de-"
"I know it," he laughed a little, "I'm there too."
He didn't stall at her use of French – and with her resolve shattering like glass, she was grateful that he didn't.
She slid nearer to him, so their hips were pressed together. Even in its austerity, the contact was electric because of the previous absence of any contact at all. He sucked in a breath, she held hers.
"I missed you," he murmured, turning to press his face into her hair. His hand grasped her upper arm.
"I know," she closed her eyes against the sensation. Her husband was clever when he wanted to be. His breath was whispering across her ear and neck – he had long ago found her weakness and now he was exploiting that sacred knowledge.
"What will I do with you?" She asked quietly, with a hint of humour in her voice.
She had forgotten how easy it was to be with him. She had forgotten the ease of conversation, the genuine humour that passed between them, the connection that was forged out of threads of steel. The ease and speed at which she capitulated to his nearness.
He laughed, though it was not without a note of sadness, into her hair.
"Forgive me, cara mia?"
She looked at him, "I longed for you."
There was no hint of humour in her voice.
"You can't know how good that is to hear," he said slowly, the words getting lost in his strong accent. When he was emotional, at either side of the grand scale of his emotional capability, she could most hear his Castilian accent. It occurred to her how much she loved that accent. After how he looked, and the way he had dressed, his accent had been her most favourite thing about him when they first met. Over the years he had trained it into an almost nomadic intonation, the thick Spanish lilt getting lost in a debonair use of English and his years at European and American schools and colleges.
When had she stopped listening to it?
"Say something in Spanish."
He looked at her, taken a little aback by the reversal of request.
"Ti amo, ti amo querida," he indulged her as she listened, as if it were precious music.
"Thank you. I missed your voice."
She didn't want to say "I missed your accent" because she thought it sounded rather foolish.
"Where do you want to go?"
She wasn't sure where really, but she knew it couldn't be the hotel. She would give in then, to him, without much seduction on his part. All he would have to say was that he loved her. She was genuinely dumbfounded by her own need. Had she been 20, she would have tortured him into submission. She feared that she was losing touch but it didn't seem to matter. She did not, could not, resist the desire and she didn't want to. Was this maturity? Was it the same as giving in?
She was shocked at this unbridled, uncontrolled desire that was flooding her. She wondered if he could tell – if the desire she was feeling was transferring into him through their pressed bodies. It horrified her that she wanted him so much. That the roles appeared to be very suddenly reversed. She was angry at herself too. She was angry because she was willing to declare the issue that had come between them inconsequential just so she could lie in his arms.
"Let's go the river," she suggested quickly.
He stood up and, gentlemanly as always, offered her his hand, "Splendid idea Tish."
