Hi! Thanks for your reviews, I really appreciate your kind words. I hope you don't mind a bit more smut... xx
Henri dreams of falling, and starts awake. His days invariably begin thus. He can never remember the dreams, which he thinks is a good thing, only that he is plummeting into darkness and that something terrible is waiting for him at the bottom. Often he wakes to find he has been asleep for a matter of minutes, and then he cannot relax enough again to drift off. It is only ever sheer exhaustion that sends him to sleep these days.
But this is definitely morning; the sun is up, spreading light across the rug and making motes of dust dance in its beam. He has been asleep for hours, hours. He cannot remember the last time he slept until morning.
He looks across to Agnes, who is still fast asleep, tangled in sheets and blankets, her hair spread out over the pillow, one hand lying curled loosely next to his face. He wants to kiss her fingers but thinks this might wake her, so for a while he lies perfectly still and watches her chest rise and fall evenly.
After a few moments he gets out of bed carefully, trying not to make the bed creak. He needn't have worried. Tired out from the past few days, and the late nights, Agnes is still deeply asleep.
He visits the bathroom, washes, shaves, and makes coffee in the kitchen. He does all of these things naked, at ease here in this place that feels almost like home. He is thinking about their discussion last night and what it might have meant. Henri had not considered the effect the opera might have on his lover. He had simply wanted to share his love of music with her, to witness her experiencing such a sublime thing for the first time, to give her an insight into his world, but instead she has given him an insight into hers.
He had not appreciated how hurt she had been by his departure, all those years ago. Ever the pragmatist, he simply assumed that the role he had taken in their relationship - tutor, if you like - had come to a natural end and she would find someone far more suitable to marry, eventually, if that was what she even wanted.
He had never intended to hurt her.
The thought of it is mortifying.
He takes his coffee and stands in the doorway to the bedroom. Agnes is still asleep. The sight of her makes him smile.
He puts the coffee down next to last night's wine glasses, goes to the next room and comes back a moment later with her sketch book and drawing pencils. Carefully, he sits cross-legged on the bed. Agnes sighs and shifts a little but stays asleep. Henri smiles again at her, how she can seemingly sleep on, despite all the noise he has been making.
He looks at her for a long while, as the light turns her skin translucent, glowing, flawless. Her eyelashes, fanned out over her cheek. Her lips parted as her breath sighs in and out. Her hair, tangled in a mass of dark waves. He begins to draw, concentrating on the lines and curves of her, the angle of her shoulder, the collar bone under her skin, the hollow at the base of her throat. He loves the way she looks. It's all he can do to stop himself pressing his lips into that place, to feel the warmth of her, the hot blood just beneath the skin.
Last night they had talked and talked. He felt as though she was angry with him, and she was probably right to be. Agnes is no longer his ingenue, his innocent. Just because he has experienced more of life than she has, he has no right to presume how she should or should not feel. He has been dismissive of her feelings, amused by them almost.
What does he know of love, after all?
How should he presume to know?
He will not make that mistake again.
He pauses in his drawing, drinks some coffee. His pocket watch, on the table, shows that it is half past seven. He will wake her at eight. There will be time to make love, before getting ready to go out on whatever pretend mission Harry Selfridge has suggested for her today.
Henri stops short - he is doing it again. Dismissing her. He must stop this. So what if Henri set this trip up for him, so that he could see Agnes? She is taking her business here seriously, and in a perverse way he loves her even more for it. By visiting the suppliers, sketching designs in the fashion house yesterday, she is becoming even more valuable to her employer. Even if it is taking up time that they could be spending alone together…
He turns the page. This time he draws her hand, just her hand. Even the curve of her fingers is something so beautiful it feels as if he will burst with love. Her fingernails are clean, trimmed to an even length, just a small curve of white at the tips of her fingers. He has a sudden recollection of the way she held him in her hands, looking up at him, concentrating, asking permission with her eyes. Checking that she was doing it the right way.
As if anything she did could possibly be wrong.
After her left hand, he turns the page again and draws her right hand, which is resting on her tummy, above the sheet; relaxed into a graceful flex, like the hand of an angel in a Michelangelo fresco. He thinks of how it might be, one day, to hold that hand in both of his and slide a ring onto her finger. Henri wonders what she would say if he were to propose. He has thought of it many times, but something is holding him back. It is not that he is uncertain of his intentions towards her: she is now the only woman he will love. It is more that he senses marriage is not her heart's desire, not yet, in any case. She told him she wanted to have children, but he knows that this is not one of her priorities. She is a free spirit, just finding her wings - how can he dare to clip them?
When Henri looks up, Agnes's eyes are open and her lips are formed into an amused smile. He has forgotten, for a moment, how searingly blue those eyes are, and his breath is snatched away by the force of her gaze.
'Good morning,' he says softly, returning to his sketch.
'What are you doing?' she asks, laughing.
'I am drawing your hands,' he replies.
'Why?'
He puts down his sketch. It is done, anyway. And now he does not wish for her to lay still any longer. He leans forward and kisses her on the mouth, exploring. Her arms slide around his neck, pulling him closer.
'Because they are beautiful, of course,' he murmurs, moving his mouth down to her throat, to the place where he has longed to kiss. 'As is the rest of you.'
Agnes sighs as he moves across to her, welcomes him under the sheets and blankets and into her arms. 'You're cold,' she says, wrapping herself around him to warm him up.
He thinks of waking in the pre-dawn, in the biting cold, everything damp, the percussion of distant guns instead of birdsong. He had thought of her warm skin, then, and thought he should never hold her again. And now she is here. He moves his hand down her back, his fingers trailing into the curve at the base of her spine, and she shivers a little.
'Did you sleep?' she asks.
'Yes, I slept well,' he says, relieved to be able to tell the truth.
She moves one leg over him, pulling him against her, and he slides his hand down her warm thigh. Her boldness is arousing and makes him smile. He trails kisses up the side of her neck, under her ear, kissing and then sucking gently on her earlobe.
'To think, I never knew,' Agnes says softly, as though she is thinking aloud.
'Knew what, my darling?' he murmurs, distracted by a glimpse of her breasts and moving to kiss them.
'That this was so wonderful, to do this,' she sighs.
He slips a hand between their bodies, begins to caress her intimately. She throws her head back into the pillow, gasping. If he enters her now it will not take much for him to reach his climax. He distracts himself by pulling her arms free from his neck, so that he can move down, planting kisses on her soft skin as he does so, until he can bury his face into her warm, damp sex. Immediately she opens her thighs wider to welcome him, threads her fingers through his hair, guiding him gently.
'You like this?' he asks, although he already knows the answer.
'Mmm,' she says, 'I think so…'
'You think so?'
'I think I need… more experience of it… to make up my mind…. Oh!'
His tongue has found her sensitive spot and is circling it, feeling it rise and swell as she grows more aroused. Hello, sweet one, he thinks, smiling at the thought that this is his place only, that her little bud is getting to know him just as he is becoming acquainted with her. He dips his tongue lazily into her space, feeling the wetness, tasting her desire. Impatiently, her hands on his head pull him back to that special place. She is learning, he thinks, beginning to rub his tongue over her with purpose, building a rhythm, fast and slow, teasing.
He listens to the noises she is making and holds her hips still while she writhes and moves under his mouth. He loves this; loves the surrendering of it, the power of her body, how it releases itself, how she loses control. He has always found this the best part of making love. Witnessing a woman laid waste before him, knowing that he was the cause of it, is something he finds unbearably arousing. And whilst concentrating on the rhythm of his movements, there is suddenly something else: the thought that he must remember this. He must remember the taste of her, the feeling of her warm skin as it slides under his tongue; he opens his eyes, watches as her body changes, how it moves, commits every last detail to memory.
Her fingers flex and grip his hair tightly as she cries out. Her body twists and pushes into his face; muscles tighten and contract for several long moments, and at last he feels her relax, the pressure released.
She lets out a long, slow sigh. Henri kisses the soft skin on her thigh. His face is wet with her love.
He wants to stay there; he could lie here all day, gazing at the source of her power, her jewels, her treasure. But she takes his hand and pulls, wordlessly drawing him back to her. He slides back up the bed until he lies next to her. He smoothes her hair out of her eyes.
'When you're ready,' he murmurs, planting a soft kiss on her forehead, 'we can go out to your next appointment.'
Agnes smiles at him. 'Thank you,' she says.