Notes: FenellaG - Hope one of the two gives enough for the Romyness to begin in this chapter! Enjoy! ;)
CITY OF LIGHTS
Chapter 9
Rogue awoke late the following morning, her sleep troubled and fitful, vacillating anxiously over what the Cajun might know or do or say about all the things he knew, or thought he knew. As always, he was uncomfortably hanging like a sword of Damocles above her head, and she resented this sway he held over her, leaving her constantly teetering on the edge of a trauma that might never come.
He was supposed to have walked out of her life, the minute he'd boarded that ship back to the States. She'd turned away and left him after what had seemed like countless weeks ensuring his survival, content with the idea that he was alive, would continue to live, would move on from her, would be happy in the arms of some other lover.
And now…?
She dressed and wandered down to breakfast. The general had already long finished, and was no doubt in his study, poring over the details of his operation. Though not particularly hungry, she picked at the various titbits on the table, and poured herself a strong coffee. She was surprised, when the butler stopped at her side and left a letter on a silver platter at her elbow.
Astonished – it was always the general who received mail, not her – she took a look at the envelope. It was a small square of paper, folded neatly, with her address on the front in a hand she didn't recognise.
Burning with curiosity now, she unfolded it carefully.
Mademoiselle Darkhölme, it read in neat French,
Meet me at L'Hotel at 7:30pm. Ask for M. Boudreaux at L'Apartment.
You are Mme. Boudreaux, of course.
Always yours,
Etienne Marceaux.
Her eyes had barely scanned the words before she was folding the paper up again violently, scared that the butler might have seen the missive as he'd leaned over to officiously top up her coffee. Her heart was beating fast, its rhythm drumming out a primeval song that she had long since locked away. Now it was playing again, so loud and insistent that her ears were rushing. Such a short note… so much said in so few words! Her hands trembled as she reached for her coffee, knowing what it all must mean. Her desire tempered by the knowing hand that had so skilfully stoked it.
Boudreaux.
The family name of his dead lover, the one she had murdered. A cruel jibe, if ever there was one. A reminder of the hatred she knew he must feel for her.
Hatred and desire. Such an intoxicating combination! She remembered how it had been the last time he had had her, back in Clan Akkaba in the ancient heart of Mesopotamia, passion and disgust, lust and misery… everything she had held dear coming to an end.
To repeat such a thing.
It left her breathless. It left her sick to her stomach.
Her coffee dropped back into its saucer with a clatter.
"Fraulein Darkhölme." The butler was at her side again with concern. "Are you unwell?"
"No." She waved him away quickly. "No – I am fine."
She could stomach no more of her breakfast.
Rising from her seat, she quickly left, throwing the note surreptitiously into the fire as she did so.
She would go to him.
For better or for worse, she would go to him.
-oOo-
L'Hotel was situated in narrow, unassuming street south of the Seine River; and from the outside, bore no especial marks of ostentation, apart from a plaque that declared that it had been the final home of the great Irish poet, Oscar Wilde.
Tucked away in this quiet thoroughfare, Rogue felt certain Remy had chosen this place for their rendezvous for the fact that there would be fewer prying eyes – and less chance that any indiscretions would be found out.
Rogue stood outside the front doors and touched her gloves with anxious anticipation. What he had planned for her, she wasn't exactly sure, but she knew it could not be entirely pleasant.
Gathering her courage, she pushed open the doors and paused on the threshold.
On the outside, the place had seemed as modest as all the other buildings surrounding it – but on the inside it was beautiful, a slice of old world splendour, the kind that would've been ubiquitous in the general's youth. Oak and mahogany, polished to a fine sheen, glistened under sultry lamplight; everything was upholstered in fine damask and velvet, and paintings of Victorian beauties lined the walls.
The concierge was standing behind a burnished reception desk, a middle-aged man with a thin face and an even thinner moustache, his thinning hair slicked back neatly. He smiled as he saw her enter.
"May I be of service, Madame?" he asked.
Rogue shook herself, her nerves almost having got the better of her. She stepped up to the desk, letting the doors swing shut behind her.
"I have a reservation," she spoke, removing her gloves.
"And your name, please?"
"Madame Boudreaux." Even as she spoke the name, it gave her pang of sorrow. "I believe my husband is already here."
"Ah." The concierge gave a knowing smile. "Yes, Monsieur Boudreaux is waiting for you. You are in L'Apartment. Sign your name, if you please."
He indicated to the guestbook – and Rogue scribbled the name Boudreaux, feeling the name taunt her as she knew it was meant to. When she placed the pen down, the concierge held out her key.
"Your suite is on the top floor," he said. "Please enjoy your stay, madame."
Everything so far, it seemed, had been designed specifically to mock her. Her assumed name; this obsequious man who thought her here for nothing more than a simple, adulterous assignation, yet could know nothing of the pain she knew must await her.
She muttered her thanks and left for the old elevator. Her heart was in her throat, and as she stepped inside she glanced at herself in the mirror there. Unable to help herself, she had made herself beautiful for him – applied rouge and lip paint, pinned and curled her hair, put on one of her most elegant dresses. The woman she saw in the mirror now was one she knew he could not help but desire – yet at the same time she feared that any recourse to her looks would be viewed by him with suspicion. To seduce him would be impossible now.
She let out a shaky breath and smoothed out her skirt.
She had lost his trust a long time gone, but she hoped she could still soften the blow of what was to come, somehow.
The elevator came to a halt, and Rogue stepped out. And there it was – the door to L'Apartment.
Rogue slipped her key into the lock – but it was already open, and she stepped inside, into the opulent luxury of a drawing room festooned with gilded furniture and red silk damask, every extravagance that it was possible to get one's hands on in annexed France. Despite her inner sense of dread, she allowed herself to be wooed a bit by the beauty of her surroundings. If seduction was a part of his plan, he had chosen well.
She turned and locked the door behind her. Her heart thudding painfully, she walked to the elegantly upholstered couch, dropped her purse there, then her hat and her jacket. Apart from the barely-there strains of big band music playing from somewhere in the apartment, there was no other evidence of his presence, and that unnerved her.
She followed the sound of the music to its source, her heels softened by the impossibly rich carpet at her feet. Of course, when she did find him, he was in the bedroom, standing over the wet bar and pouring two glasses of wine as red as her lips, a gramophone sat on a small table in the corner by a richly made up bed. He looked up as she came in, then quickly down again.
"Bon soir, Madame Boudreaux," he greeted her. His tone was half-mocking, and she inwardly baulked a little at it, assured now of everything this rendezvous entailed. It was nothing more than a continuation of where they had left off, eight long years ago.
Knowing her fate, she took a step into the room, but he looked up again quickly, having poured the wine, saying:
"Non. Stay there. Where I can see ya."
She stopped.
He turned to face her, glass in hand. He was in casual slacks, a shirt halfway unbuttoned, black suspenders. Insouciantly beautiful, as always. He looked her up and down with his red on black eyes, once, twice, his expression showing that he liked what he saw. The almost-smile on his face flickered into life, there one moment, gone the next.
"Whatever gun y'have on you," he commanded quietly, yet by no means unauthoritatively, "take it off."
It didn't matter that she knew now for certain what his intentions were – it still shook her to hear the business-like disinterest in his voice. Wordlessly, her mouth set flat, she hitched up her skirt and removed the tiny Derringer from her garter. As she did so he stepped forward, free hand outstretched, and, a little begrudgingly at having been outsmarted again, she slapped it into his open palm. In its place he offered her the glass of wine, and, without knowing exactly why, she took it.
"There now," he spoke, stepping back into his original position and setting the Derringer on the wet bar. "That wasn't so difficult now, was it?"
He lifted the other wineglass from the counter beside him and took a sip, as she stared wordlessly at him.
"Whassa matter?" he asked in a flat tone. "Drink."
She did so, one small sip, feeling miserable and sick inside. If it had been poison she was drinking right now, she wouldn't have cared. To drop through this floor, to be consumed under the rock and the earth and mire conjured up by Antaeus' cruel power right now… it would've been a mercy.
Seeing her drink seemed to take some of the tension from him. His stance loosened; he up-ended the wineglass and drank it all in one go. He half-turned and poured himself another.
"Who's Anna Darkhölme?" he asked conversationally, as she watched the blood-red liquid fill the elegantly-curved glass.
She was confused.
"What?"
"Anna Darkhölme." His glass was full again, and he laid aside the bottle, glanced at her. "Who is she? Some other woman you murdered with your bare hands?"
Her stomach dropped, further than Antaeus' power could have laid her.
"A silly Bavarian woman I met in Marrakech five years ago," she answered quietly, her ears ringing. "No doubt she's still living her silly life somewhere in the world right now. Hopefully not anywhere near where the war is."
He quirked a smile at that; if he didn't believe her, at least he thought it amusing.
"Tell me," he began conversationally, as she watched him suddenly move towards the gramophone, "about the people on the train."
"I already told you," she answered quietly.
"Yes," he nodded, switching out the swing music. "Mutants. Where are they goin'?"
"To Alsace, to the border. But you know that already. You've seen it in the papers you stole from the general."
"Dat I have," he nodded again. He slipped on a new record, set it to play. This time the music was slower, more romantic… but somehow slightly mournful.
"They say there are labour camps to the east. Where they send people to die."
She said nothing. Her throat was freezing over, constricting, and if this was where his line of questioning was going, she wasn't sure she could answer him without losing it.
He cocked his head at her silence, both amused and irritated. Seeing she would not comment on this point, he moved back to the wet bar, picked up his glass, then took a couple of steps towards her.
"Tell me about Operation X," he said instead, changing tack. She almost blinked at the question.
"I can't tell you," she replied.
"Really?" He drank again from his glass, deeply. "You tell me you're in my power. I think that means that you'll answer every question I ask, otherwise I begin telling the world who and what you really are… and what you may or may not being doing wheedlin' your double-crossin' self into General Wagner's affections."
She looked at him with distress in her eyes, and there was no hiding it.
"The Third Reich is developing a super weapon—"
"I heard dat," he nodded shrewdly.
"Then what you heard… It is Operation X."
His brow furrowed in obvious frustration at her evasiveness.
"Tell me about the lab," he prodded, and her eyes widened at just how much he – and presumably the Resistance, whom she suspected he worked for – knew.
"They take the mutants there."
"To test the weapon?"
She nodded dumbly.
"And then they take them on to die in Alsace," he finished.
She stared at him, her eyes burning. Whatever was in her face he took to be silent assent.
"Tell me somethin' I don't know," he said, a threat implicit in his voice – that if she did not supply him with information useful to him, her secrets would be laid bare.
Her eyes darted away, to the floor, to the richly-adorned bed with its crimson damask throw, back to his.
"The nullifiers are for the people on the train," she admitted at last. "So they can't use their powers."
Again, her words made him relax. He blinked, slowly, asked:
"So they're mass-produced?"
"Yes."
"Who made them?"
"A scientist. A British man, a Nazi sympathiser—"
"His name, chere."
She hesitated, not because she didn't wish to impart this information, but because everything here so far hurt.
"Essex. Nathaniel Essex."
He nodded slightly, to himself.
Having extracted everything he apparently wanted from her, he took those few steps back to stand in his original position once more.
"There," he repeated once again. "Wasn't so bad now, was it?" And he drained the rest of his glass.
She wasn't so sure. There was this driving coldness to him, this sardonic bitterness that left her feeling wretched to her very core. Eight years, she realised, had done nothing to dispel the hate he felt for her, and it gnawed at her heart to know it was the truth. She had no more taste for her wine; yet she saw him pour yet another, and as he did so he spoke yet again with unpractised flippancy.
"Show me your wrists."
A little confused, she slowly set aside her glass, pulled up her sleeves, and held them out to him. He took a glance at them, and apparently not seeing what he wanted to see, said: "Bon."
She dropped her arms. She was getting increasingly tense, increasingly perplexed about what he wanted from her, even if she knew only one conclusion was possible. He seemed to sense her thoughts, and he raised his third drink to his lips, smiled conspiratorially.
"Take off your clothes," he told her.
So. Here it was. At last.
It was almost a relief to have it finally upon her.
Slowly she undid the buttons of her blouse, slid the garment off her, then her skirt. When she was done, she stood a moment, uncertain and unhappy.
"All of them," he prompted her, with fire in his eyes.
He took a long slow sip of his wine as he watched her remove her heels, then her stockings, taking the garters with them. When she got to her bra, the rim of the glass was at his lips, but he didn't drink… just watched. She unclasped the brassiere, shrugged the straps down her shoulders, feeling the crawl of humiliation, shot through with a familiar stirring she had thought long-dead, responding unconsciously to the fiery sweep of his gaze. It prickled up from the pits of her belly and lower as she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her silk French knickers and pulled them down, right down to the white shag rug. She stepped out of them with unconscious grace, her flesh goosepimpling at the sudden change in temperature. And yet, the warm, slow tide of heat was unrolling inside of her, the way it had just the last time they had done this.
Gazes still locked, the moment was charged with a frisson neither could deny. All the passion and desire buried somewhere in the eight years they'd been apart bubbled dangerously up from some dark and secret place between them. Never had she wanted to read his thoughts so badly! And yet there was nothing, not even from the him in her head, the him she'd suppressed, to give but a wisp of an inkling away.
In that moment he seemed to realise himself, and he suddenly knocked back the rest of his glass, set it aside on the counter beside him with an undisguised tremor in his hand.
There was a drawer at his elbow, and he swept it open with a jerky movement, reached inside, and brought out his nullifying bracelet.
"Here," he said in a voice thick with desire, throwing her the bracelet. "Put it on."
She realised now why he had asked to look at her wrists. She caught the bracelet, looked at him. Slowly she snapped it on. Almost at once a slow pressure began to build behind her eyes, the familiar side effect of the device kicking in.
Her mounting anticipation of what would come next was also building, demanding some resolution.
It was the same for him too. His movements were impatient as he put the Derringer in the drawer, turned the key in the lock, and whirled towards the open window. With a flick of the wrist he had tossed the key and it was gone, out the window and down into the square below.
Such precaution, she thought dejectedly. Knowing he thought she could and would shoot him with that thing brought a sourness to her mouth.
He snapped the windows shut, turned back to her. Desire was stark in his devilish eyes, like something she'd conjured up in her most feverish dreams, the ones she kept vehemently to herself. He stalked over to her slowly, as if he, too, believed he were in a dream. Only looking, not touching. There was none of the fury she had seen in him back in his room at Clan Akkaba's lair – only this cool and appraising detachment that was, ironically, so at odds with the lust she saw in his eyes. Until that moment she had never understood what it meant to uncouple passion from intimacy till she met his gaze then.
"I always did think," he murmured, as he paced a circle round her, so near and yet so far, careful not to touch despite the bracelet on her arm, "dat you were de most beautiful woman I ever saw, Rogue."
Past tense.
It belied the unashamed longing in his voice, and she wondered who else he had met between now and then that had surpassed her.
He paused, right behind her, and she felt his hand brush her hair from her shoulder, still careful not to touch, his face so close she could feel his breath on her skin.
"Hell, when I turn down gettin' fucked by a goddess like Ishtar herself for ya, that's sayin' somethin', huh?"
Despite where she was, despite the obviousness of what this was going to be – a dirty transaction – she felt a thrill inside her to know what she had not known before – that he had had the will to push away the goddess and love and sex herself for broken old her. She trembled to know it.
He hovered there behind her for what seemed an awful amount of time, as if he expected her to say something… but she didn't, couldn't. Nothing she could have said could have articulated the bittersweet swell of love she felt for him now, such a long, lonely feeling she'd held down for such a long time.
"I was angry at ya dat day, chere," he murmured, still so close. "I was angry and I hated ya, but I still thought she couldn't hold a candle to ya."
And he put his hands on her upper arms, his fingers curling around her still goose-pimpled flesh, the press of his skin on her skin sending a hidden warmth suffusing her entire body, from tip to toe. The exhalation from her lips was audible and he heard it. Slowly his hands swept up to her shoulders, leaving her skin only to take her long thick hair between his palms and twist it aside, over her right shoulder… and still, he was barely touching her.
"For all de good it did me, when she tried t'seduce me, all I could think of was you."
And he stepped in towards her, the warmth length of his clothed body pressing in against her lush curves, his cheek pressed into her hair… and only belatedly did she realise that her breath was coming in short, shallow, soundless gasps already at the familiar contours of him against her, a shape she'd never dreamed she'd mark out again.
"All I could think of was you," he whispered, close to her ear without touching… And that's when his hands came round, snaking in under her arms and up to catch both her breasts with his palms, driving a deep and animal sound from the back of her throat that she hadn't made since…
Since him.
He kissed the side of her head, and she could feel the smile on his lips as he crooned: "Always did love ta hear ya moan for me, Rogue."
It was like he was toying with her… she was fairly sure he was… yet she couldn't help her body respond to his touch, and she arched back into him, wanting more of this, more of him, forbidden and long-denied sensualities unfurling in her like a sail into the wind.
"And now we're back here," he whispered, as his roughened hands caressed her nipples to almost painful attention. "Right back t'where we started. Paris, and what you always wanted from me. To be fucked."
His right hand moved down, swirling over her naked body in tantalising patterns she recalled as if from some other life, so delicate and even worshipful that they almost contradicted the harsh vulgarity of his words. Whatever headache had been building behind her eyes was merely an inconvenient backdrop to the sweep of his words, of his caress.
"You still want it," he continued, a sibilant chorus in her ear, as his fingers trailed closer to where she wanted, needed him to be. "Eight years, Rogue, and you still want it bad."
If he had wanted any confirmation, the way she was panting now was all he needed.
"When you first saw me here, you wanted me," he continued, the words driving into her, piercing her soul. "You tried to hide it, but you couldn't. Not from yourself. Not from me."
He was so close, and she whimpered her assent, her hand moving to cover his own, pushing it lower, where she needed him to be.
And he laughed. A slow, wicked chuckle as he gave into her, dipping his middle finger between her already-slick folds… And she gasped at the intimacy of the touch, her body singing as she pressed back against him, her body involuntarily undulating, seeking some closer, deeper connection, one she couldn't find. Her knees parted and almost buckled at the torturous pleasure, but he held her firmly in place with his strong arm, his left hand palming her breast as he slipped his finger up inside her, forcing an explosively guttural cry from her throat, one that transformed into a long, low, keening mewl as he slipped another finger inside her, coaxing a pleasure from her that was almost beyond reason.
His own breathing was coming hard in her ear now; and as her body moved against his she felt his own arousal begin to press against the small of her back. His fingers were moving deeper inside her now; and he shifted his position to pleasure her all the better, standing almost at her side, his wrist twisting to gain better access, to knead his thumb against her clit.
She fairly screamed at that moment.
"Tell me that you want it, Rogue," he muttered hoarsely in her right ear this time, and she opened her mouth, wanting release more than anything, the one thing only he could give her.
"I—I—"
"Do you want it, Rogue," he insisted, his voice almost harsh in its raggedness, his erection hard against her hip, and:
"Yes!" she burst.
And suddenly he'd backed away, his fingers sliding out of her just as her climax had seemed an inevitability, and she sagged forward on legs that felt like jello, nearly falling to her knees on the white shag rug, almost sobbing with the enforced denial.
In the ensuing silence, all that could be heard was the clipped rhythm of both their panting.
Rogue hugged herself numbly, her body pulsing with need.
"Get on the bed," she heard him say.
She stared dumbly over her shoulder at him, seeing him standing there with this cold fire in his beautiful eyes, words failing her.
"Get on the bed," he ordered her again, his voice flat, hard. "On your knees."
Sorrow swelled through her again, trapping her in a memory of a memory of something she'd tried hard to forget, or file the edges off of. Slowly, and shaking from the cold and the humiliation and her ripped-away climax, she moved to the bed – too slow for his liking apparently, as he gripped her upper arm, hard enough to bruise, and jerked her towards it. Heart crashing, she crawled up onto the bed on all fours, knowing instinctively what he wanted. It was almost like a mirror image of what had happened at Clan Akkaba's stronghold; and even in the depths of this torture, her body was longing for this connection like it was something divine, no matter how brutal the act. As before, she would not deny him. What she owed him was nothing more or less than retribution, deliverance from the horrible evil she had done him. For as long as he needed to enact that on her, out of love she could only give it to him, willingly, slavishly if she had to.
She felt the weight of his knees press into the bed behind her, heard the breaths surging through him like a wild animal; then the sound of him unzipping himself impatiently and—
And suddenly he was plunging into her from behind, without warning or preamble, the moment driving a strangled cry from both their lips.
Stars formed behind her eyes, quickly followed by hot tears – years of celibacy had wound her tighter than tight, and there was pain at his entrance, quickly followed by a reignition of the pleasures he'd only just cruelly taken from her… And again she whimpered, begging inarticulately for this terrible thing, his love when he hated her so much.
His name fell from her lips, both a prayer and a plea, for what, she didn't know.
Or maybe she did.
A prayer for more, a plea for mercy.
Again she said it, as he thrust into her again and again, grunting with the effort, his fist gripping roughly at her hair.
The third time, it was like he heard her, calling from some distant place… and something in him slowed and twisted, a faithless memory of what he had done to her in another time and another place, so perfectly aligned to this one.
"Fuck," she heard him gasp on an inhalation.
At first she thought it signalled the onset of his climax; but instead he slid out of her, leaving her insides twitching hungrily, once more, at the loss of him. She felt the heat from his body as he leaned over her back, his arm hooking her chest and pulling her into an upright position against him.
"I need t' see ya," he muttered gruffly, almost to himself.
He twisted her roughly in his arms, so that she was facing him; instinctively her hands went to his still-clothed chest, now hot and damp with sweat, where she felt his breath heaving and his heart racing… And he soaked her in with eyes that bled raw fire, cupping her face between his heated palms, murmuring:
"I need t' kiss ya."
And he did, the breathless crush of his mouth claiming hers, fierce and needy – the first kiss they'd shared in so damn long it seemed almost criminal. Her hands climbed up to find the nape of his neck, fisting into the hair there, her mouth twisting into his kiss for something deeper, more intense, more perfect, something neither of them could find.
His hands dropped from her face, turning their attention to the buttons of his shirt, eager as he was now to be unclothed, to feel her against him. As he seemed to have no more desire to see her passive, Rogue took the opportunity to slide the suspenders down his shoulders, her fingers coming down to thumb open the button of his pants and shuck the whole thing down, briefs included. At the same moment he stripped away his shirt, flinging it aside impatiently, hopping off the bed only tear away his pants and underwear, before joining her again, almost winding her with unrestrained kisses.
Gawd.
It was like the sun bursting over her in the same glorious blaze that had once graced them with its primeval radiance in Cairo.
Memories colliding, worlds crashing, stars collapsing in on themselves and forming new galaxies.
She reached down between them and found his cock, still slick with her wetness, and, wanting nothing more than to please him now, she stroked him firmly, lovingly. She was rewarded when he moaned into their kiss, breaking away only to drop his head into her shoulder, his teeth catching there as he made incoherent, open-mouthed noises at the greedy insinuation of her touch.
She stopped only when she felt he was close. Not to torture him, as he had done to her earlier, but because she wanted him to come inside her. She touched his face, as if to call him to his senses – he shifted, reclaiming her mouth once more, kisses deeper, slower, but no less passionate.
Together they tumbled back onto the sheets and he nudged her over and on top of him – an interesting position, considering the dominance he'd asserted at the outset of this illicit tryst, and that she'd assumed he'd wanted to maintain. She allowed herself to straddle him, bracing her arms either side of him, wondering, again, just what he was thinking. His erection was pressing straight up against her belly, and he stuck just the tip of his tongue out between his teeth and moved his hips slowly, signalling to her what he wanted. She understood on instinct, lowering herself onto him, sliding her pelvis up and down, rubbing her still damp sex up and down the length of his cock.
"Uh-huh," he voiced in a higher pitch than his normal voice; his teeth released his tongue and he placed a hand on her backside as he began to grind back against her slowly, his other hand sliding round the back of her neck and pulling her down into another deep and liquid kiss.
For a while they rocked against one another, their pace as slow and unhurried as it had been desperate and wild before. Again, Rogue felt the overwhelming need to have him inside her, even as, with her chest pressed to his, she felt the brand of the ring he wore about his neck sear against her breast. It was a reminder of something that made her heart ache in ways she couldn't analyse, not just yet, and especially not so close to her heart's desire.
Unable to wait any longer, she reached down behind her and found him, readjusting her position. Breaking their kiss, she pushed herself off him slightly, biting into her bottom lip and chancing a look into his eyes. That mesmerising gaze of his held hers from beneath heavy, assessing lids, giving her some kind of permission that she still felt the need to ask for. She rubbed the tip of him along her moist folds, watching his eyelids flutter at the sensation. He was so quiet. Back in the day she had been so used to his murmurings, his sweet nothings… but then she remembered that this was different, a transaction… maybe not so cynical as it had started out, but still a transaction nonetheless.
That gave her pause for thought; doubt took her.
Somewhere at the back of her mind she remembered what she owed him for the terrible betrayal she had inflicted on him. And that this was only a part of it.
She was brought to reality as he moved his hips impatiently, nudging just inside of her entrance. Despite the turmoil of her emotions, she obliged him, positioning herself so that, slowly, deliciously, he was finally sliding back inside her once more.
Again, she felt the tightness she'd first felt when he'd taken her from behind; but if there was any pain, this time it was muted, and quickly passed. Finally inside her as far as he could go, a rumble of deep satisfaction sounded in Remy's throat. She thought for a moment that he would whisper something to her, but again, he was silent, unmoving. She knew what it meant. Just like the first time he'd shown her this position, he was waiting for her to make her move, to seek out her pleasure.
She did.
She found her rhythm, thinking it cruel that he should afford her this heady luxury of control under such circumstances; and once she had he joined her, syncing effortlessly, sinfully with her tempo, painfully, maddeningly unhurried. She braced a hand against his chest for better purchase, one hand subconsciously covering the ring at his breast. Again her gaze turned troubled as she touched the thing that was all too familiar and hated to her. He saw the look; and his hands grasped at her knees, tucking them into a position that brought her in deeper contact with him; at the deliciously intimate contact she cried out, all the doubt stripped from her mind as he thrust up into her long and torturously languid.
This glorious pace could not last forever. The need for sweet release took over, for her in ways that made her feel a desperate abandon she hadn't dared entertain for years. She ground against his pelvic bone with an utter shamelessness, tearless sobs of sweet frustration convulsing through her that he was making her this way. His fingers dug into her thighs as he grunted with the effort of satisfying her wanton race for release, so hard she felt sure bruises would show. She didn't care. The maelstrom of pain with pleasure seemed all too perfect and inevitable a partnership.
It was like chasing the sun, so elusive and magnificent the pleasure of it simply could not last.
Her climax burst onto her horizon, just like that Cairo sun, her body jerking and bucking to contain the headrush.
It was impossible to, and she let it go with an explosive exhalation, gasping for breath in its wake.
She sank into him, utterly exhausted.
Moments later she felt his body go rigid beneath her, then the hot liquid pulse of his orgasm as he moaned his release. All too quickly his body unwound, sinking back onto the mattress, sweat-slicked and flushed like he'd just run a marathon.
Silence fell.
There were no kisses, no touches. No soft, loving words spoken.
Rogue remained where she was for several heartbeats, her cheek pressed against his chest, her gaze falling on the ring there. A bitterness rose to her throat and she quickly rolled away from him, from it, onto her back.
They lay side by side, panting, both stricken by the intensity of their climax. What the body doesn't experience after even a short interlude, she thought wryly, it forgets so quickly.
She chanced a glance over at him, only to find his eyes already on her. His chest was rising and falling fast, hard, the ring on its chain rising with it.
A question was pushing at her; and she couldn't help but voice it.
"How did you find that?" she found herself asking him – the first words either of them had spoken in what felt like forever.
He looked down at the ring, back over at her. His expression was closed suddenly, whatever thoughts he'd opened up to her with that look sealed off in a single second.
"Same place you left it," he replied, simply.
He didn't clarify the statement, and she realised it was stupid of her to expect a proper answer. Whatever he had wanted out of tonight, he'd got everything he'd come for. To stay would be to lengthen out this awkward and wistful roleplay. To yearn for things they could no longer give one another.
It was too much, when she thought of all the intimacies they'd shared, the dreams she'd dared to harbour for them.
She sat up and shifted off of the decadent bed. Picking up her discarded clothes from the floor, she headed for the en-suite bathroom.
"Just goin' to clean up," she told him unnecessarily, in her native-born Southern accent. When she glanced over her shoulder at him, he was lying there, watching her, his arms pillowed behind his head.
He was still in the exact same position five minutes later, when she remerged fully clothed, only this time, there was a cigarette between his lips, as if nothing had happened.
Close by, the gramophone was still playing some mournful song.
"I should go," she said self-consciously at his stillness, his silence, his watchfulness. "The general will be wondering where I am."
"Naturally," he retorted mockingly. "I'm sure de general don't like to be cuckolded."
She stopped at the door back to the lounge, irritated beyond belief by his assumption.
"Remy," she levelled at him with cool dignity. "The general is not my lover." She paused, glanced at the drawer where her Derringer was still locked. At this point she could've smashed the damn thing open and taken it back, but she wasn't of a mind to do any damage to this beautiful room. "I'm his bodyguard."
She turned, about to leave, then thought of something else.
"Oh. Here." She threw the nullifying bracelet onto the bed between them. "This is yours."
And she stalked out of the room, shutting the door behind her with a firm and final click.
-oOo-