She should not have known how he felt when he saw her that night. She should have never heard those thoughts he had when his eyes fell upon her, clouded with forget-me-not blue and sheer inebriation. She should have never known that he felt like his lungs had never been more clear and open, while the rest of his body had felt like it was suffocating. But in their bed, he propelled against the laws of nature, and he shared those forbidden thoughts with her.
At some point while listening to the timbre of Georg's voice, which had become so achingly familiar and comforting, Maria fell asleep. But she could never reach the deepest levels of sleep anymore. Sleeping beside a man put a gentle wrench in her mind, and his presence was always thrumming in the background of her consciousness. She slipped in and out of dreams, sometimes unaware if she was really awake or not. His body heat was the only overarching constant that she could feel which tied her to reality.
When she slept, she still saw him. Behind the stoic black curtain of her closed eyes, she saw his cold silhouette upon their first greeting, his arms spanning the width of the open ballroom doors. She saw his fist slamming down in frustration on the balustrade at his villa, the ever-straight sleeves of his jacket flattered by the shadows of trees and sunlight. She saw his familiar form, rigid and unforgiving, clad in uniform… with the swastika on his arm.
Maria woke with a start in a bed that did not belong to her, in a pair of arms that did not belong to the Third Reich. She blinked a few times, then sighed in relief. The man behind her echoed her with a quiet breath. Slowly, she turned to view his face.
His eyes would have given her frostbite had he not been her husband.
"How do you feel?" he asked her in a voice that sounded like a restless river beneath a storm.
Maria studied her husband's face for a long moment, finding it harder to catch her breath the longer she stared. "I feel as if I've left an entire life I've known behind and taken over a stranger's body," she replied honestly.
There was a significant rush of pure darkness in his blue eyes when he answered in kind, "So do I."
She did not know why kissing him seemed to be the best choice in that moment, but something about the way he looked at her had emboldened her to pursue the desire before it fled. If anything, it could save her from having to produce words, which had never before been a weakness of hers. In this bed, it was just one new weakness among many.
Her entire body was lit with invisible flames as he probed her lips with his tongue, and in mere seconds she felt herself submitting to that same mysterious force she had only learned of the previous night. How he held such power over her, she could not comprehend. It did not feel like the kind of power any man should wield, but rather a power only God should handle. She felt suddenly that she would be willing to let him see every part of her, even in the slow but steady sunrise peeking through the partially curtained windows. Such thoughts were usually purged from her mind. But she did not make an effort to purge them this time, and the results were intoxicating.
Before long his hands grasped at her from behind – her breasts, her hips, her neck – all with a desperate intensity that wavered between clutching and caressing. His breathing became nearly as delirious as her own, and she found it harder to swallow for her throat was so tight with anticipation.
She should have been fearful in knowing she was soon to revisit the pain from the prior evening, but she was not. Despite this, she trusted him implicitly.
It did not surpass her, even now, that she had once used the Abbey as an escape from this man. Now he used her as his escape from the trials of his life. She was not upset about it. She was thrilled by it, perhaps wrongly so. She did not care. She found that she could only withstand so much of his touch before she gave up all efforts to compose any sense of decency or decorum. She hoped that her morals would still be intact by the time they returned to Austria.
Maria blushed to think that the Captain could have done these things to her before, in so many circumstances before it wasn't socially acceptable. That if she had been any less sensible, and he had been any less of a gentleman, he could have taken her this way behind closed doors in his study. Or behind the hedges in his courtyard. Or in the lake behind his villa. The concept of saving oneself for such intimacy only in wedlock suddenly seemed like a frightfully fragile task. She had done it without a second thought, believing she would be joining the convent; but had she agreed to any other vocation at the time, she may have fallen for The Captain's hands much sooner.
In the midst of it all, she heard him asking her to hold him. Her body filled with a white-hot awareness that he needed this; he had craved human connection for so long on a level he had denied himself for years. It probably should not have given her pleasure to learn that when he found himself clasped by the elegant embrace of Baroness Schraeder, he felt nothing but void.
And so Maria wrapped her arms around him, and it felt nothing like her duty.
He responded in many ways, all at once, all of which were unexpected. He pinned her wrists to the bed in a way that was somehow delicately violent, though she knew he'd never cause her harm. The action thrilled her, and trailing along with it came the ever-present feeling of conviction.
He noticed. And he asked her what was wrong. And she froze.
How to explain?
She didn't want him to let her go, but he did – only for a moment – and she unthinkingly grasped his hand back and clutched it against her chest. His breath steadied as his knuckles rested against her heartbeat, allowing her the time to find words.
"Sometimes," she began shakily, "it just feels…wrong." She heard his breath skip, but he maintained solid stillness as he listened, knowing she would explain further. "It feels… like I shouldn't be enjoying it… but I do."
The wait for his reply was agonizing. When he finally spoke, his words were quiet and simple.
"I understand."
Just those two words had never sounded more supportive or romantic before in her life.
She felt relief, but it still wasn't strong enough to erase the confusion. She looked up at his eyes, searching for an answer. Instead, he answered her with a longing purr against her neck, "But this could never be wrong."
Maria was torn. The feelings he was giving her, especially now, reminded her of the same rush of forbidden pleasure that she received from sin.
Again, she gave into it. The feelings were not straightforward. They were all over the place, scattered, sometimes warm, sometimes chilling. Sometimes she felt that she was not in her own body, and other times she was so in tune with her own body that it caused her distress. He knew she was in turmoil – she could sense it in the way he was touching her. There was a complete lack of brutish insistence in the palms of his hands, which went against his character. Just like last night.
This time, she confronted him about it.
"Why are you not more demanding with me?"
The sentence came out as a hushed, clumsy contrast to his attempts at affection. She felt her cheeks burn as he paused to interpret her question.
It took Georg much longer to respond than she was comfortable with. He made no eye contact with her at first, instead choosing to stare intensely at the blanket while his hands kept a half-hearted hold on her arms.
"I've left many of my past behaviors in the confessional."
It was a shameful admission. Maria struggled to process the meaning behind Georg's words until he continued softly, "You were the one who made me see that my eldest daughter is a woman now. My imagination can hardly stomach the thought of any man treating Liesl in certain ways, and I must hold myself to the same standard now."
This hadn't been what she was expecting to hear. Oddly, it warmed her heart – this subtle but certifying proof that he was not just a man – he was a man with children.
Finally he looked at her, and the very veins in her body felt like ribbons untangling.
"You have no idea how much I've changed just from knowing you," he confessed.
She melted.
It wasn't clear how she ended up consumed within his embrace again, but she found herself there again nonetheless. So much was still unclear, but his assurance was all she seemed to need to be at his bidding all over again. There had always been a clear power imbalance between them both – she was certainly not blind to that, though she felt compelled to constantly challenge it. Here, she felt no offense to such a dynamic; in fact, there seemed to be just as many moments where he was submitting to her.
Trying to comprehend their life ahead was almost impossible. It was so different than imagining a maze of endless, claustrophobic cloisters had she taken the path to the convent. Two vastly different worlds, with completely opposite implications for her development as a person under Christ's watch. In the back of her mind, Mother Abbess's fond voice lilted that same sweet observation, "You have a great capacity to love. What you must find out is how God wants you to spend your love."
Maria hated to over-credit herself, but perhaps her capacity was even more superfluous than she had been led to believe. Had it not been for her mentor's firm insistence on her leaving the Abbey, she would never have fallen into this life.
By now the sun had struck pink and gold shards of light through the partly covered windows to their suite. Across the bed, the strips of light stretched like swords along the sheets, unable to pinch her awake from this dream.
Throughout their lovemaking Maria remembered a time before she had met the von Trapp family – how naive she had been, how far off her manufactured image of a gruff, bearded old sea captain had been from the true Captain von Trapp. She had never envisioned a man so handsome, so dangerously intelligent, so distressingly aware of his surroundings. And as he would later confess to her, he had never dared to imagine a governess who was not frumpy, middle-aged, strict, and intolerant beyond measure. What a pair had come to be from their mistaken first impressions.
The thought of growing old with him, of watching the children find love and lives of their own, of being a Baroness by his side – all of it was too much for her to comprehend. Much less the thought of having more of his children…
It dawned on her now, that God had performed the most beautiful betrayal on her.
She found herself so lost in her husband's arms, so consumed by his touch, that she was completely unaware of where his hands had ventured. Her legs were tangled in lovely ways around his hips, and her neck was arched beneath his lips, and his hair was disheveled in deviant waves, falling against her forehead as he moved against her. It was the combination of all those tiny physical things, with all of those insanely intimate thoughts that did it. All she could do was surrender.
That was when it happened. A titillating rush of sublime pleasure swallowed her, body and soul. She was unable to form coherent thought or reason, surrendered as she was so completely to the riveting, shuddering warmth. She thrashed in his arms as if fighting to keep her grasp on the pleasure before it could escape her, but slowly the shudders wore down. Steadily at first, then gradually shallower and shallower until they were gone and her body lay limp and breathless against his body.
All the words of her native language, and all the songs she had sung, and all the Bible passages she had memorized were all swept from her mind in an instant. All that was left behind was a preposterous level of pleasant exhaustion she had never felt the likeness of before. The sheer knowledge that God had created such a feeling to exist between man and wife was intoxicating.
Though she was barely able to open her eyes, she knew her husband had found his pleasure in the wake of hers. She could feel the swell and subsequent settling of his body, the raggedness of his breath, the pure hammering of his heart. If it weren't for the unignorably solid realness of him lying next to her, she would have easily believed she was still dreaming.
Absently, Maria whispered into the poorly lit room, "Is this how I'm supposed to feel?"
In a tone that was hardly audible, he replied with a smile in his voice, "Yes, my dear."
Author's Note: I have to apologize for the delay in this final chapter. Life tends to interfere at the most inopportune times, as we all know.
Thank you once again to everyone who has reviewed, shared thoughts, given encouragement, and stuck around to the end. Perhaps one day in the future I will write more for this fandom. I have grown a very strong affection for all of the lovely people here.
-Mackenzie