Christmas Beau

The slow languorous time of love was past. The heat of passion was back, but with it an intimacy that went beyond the mere physical. She could feel it in his hands, in his mouth, his body. And it was with the love at the core of her, not just with her hands and her mouth, that she touched him.

She let her hands roam over him, touching lea

"Max."

It was an ache that he was building to an almost unbearable tension. He was touching her where she had never been touched with a hand, with fingers, stroking, parting, feathering, tickling. Pushing inside. Deeper inside. She felt her muscles clench around him.

"Max."

"I want to be there," he said. His voice was low against her ear.

"Yes."

"Do you want me, Judith?"

Foolish words. Her body and her voice were crying out for him. "Yes."

"There?"

"Yes."

"Here?"

His weight was on her, his blessed weight, bearing her down into the softness of the bed, and her thighs were being opened against the hardness of his legs, and he was there, pressing where his fingers had been, holding, waiting.

"Yes."

He was watching her, her eyes tightly closed, her face tense. Beautiful. And he savored the moment. The moment for which he had waited all his life. This was not something he would do in quick frenzy. He was going to love her as he had dreamed countless times of doing it. In a moment he would be inside her and she would be his. And he would be hers. She opened her eyes.

"Like this," he said. "Like this, Judith." And he held her eyes with his as he entered her, feeling himself gradually sheathed in heat and moistness and contracting muscles.

"Yes," she said. Her voice was almost a sob.

He had to lower his head and close his eyes for a moment so that he would not lose control.

It had always been a purely physical thing. Not quite unpleasant except toward the end when she disliked and despised Andrew. But not quite pleasant either. Something a little embarrassing, a little distasteful. A duty. Something she had always wanted to be over and done with quickly. She had never, even in the early days of her marriage, really enjoyed the sexual act.

There could be nothing more physical than what was happening to her now. An act performed slowly and in nakedness. Heat. Depth. Wetness. The sound of wetness. A slow deep rhythm.

And yet there could be nothing more beautiful on this earth. His body. Hers. Himself. Herself. Their love meeting and entwining and expressing itself inside her. Both of them inside her, exchanging love, exchanging selves in the slow rhythm of the early stages of the love act. One body. The phrase suddenly made perfect sense to her.

"Max?"

''Mmm.'' He lowered his head to hers, kissed her warmly.

"Max, it hurts."

"Does it?" He continued to kiss her, felt her hips move against his, felt the stirrings of climax in her, and speeded his rhythm.

He could not wait much longer. He wanted the closeness, the intimacy, never to end. He wanted never to let her go, never to allow her to be free of him. But the physical act must end. It was time for the ultimate giving and receiving. He wanted to feel her final surrender, the final opening to him, the final pushing beyond the barrier of her tension. And he wanted to give himself, his seed, his future to his woman.

And she was coming to him, lifting to him, tensing against him, whimpering, and then opening and stilling with the wonder and shock of her surrender, and shuddering and reaching for him and crying out his name.

And his seed sprang in her and he held her to him, feeling all his strength, all his tension drain out of him and into the woman he had loved all his life, for all eternity. He heard the sound of her name.

When she woke up, she was lying on her side pressed warmly against him, her head on his shoulder, his arm about her, the blankets up around them both. She could not remember ever feeling quite so comfortable.

The room was warm, the fire crackling in the hearth. He had got up some time after their first loving and built it up again before returning to the bed to love her again.

She could not see the room because she had her back to it. But she could picture it in her mind, small and snug. An idyllic cottage in the woods. She wished they could spend the rest of their lives there, and smiled at the thought. The two of them and Rupert and Kate all together in the one-roomed cottage for the rest of their lives. And perhaps… well, she had made the calculations last night. She had known

even before leaving the house with him that this was quite the most dangerous part of her month. And he had loved her twice.

The two of them and Rupert and Kate and a black-haired baby. She smiled again at the absurdity of her own thoughts and tipped her head to look up at him. He was awake and gazing back at her, his face quite serious.

"What are you thinking?" She raised a hand and laid the backs of her fingers against his jaw.

He shook his head slightly.

"I was thinking about our living here in this cottage for the rest of our lives," she said. "Silly, is it not?"

"Yes," he said.

"How long have we slept?" sheasked. "It is still daylight outside, but we will have to be going back soon, won't we?"

"Yes," he said.

"Mmm." She sighed. "I wish we did not have to. Don't you?"

"We have to," he said. He was still not smiling.

"Max." She rubbed her face against his chest, kissed him there, and tipped her head back again. "I love you."

He looked back at her and said nothing.

She rested her fingertips against his cheek and gazed into his eyes. There was something there, something far back in them. "What is it?"

"I am embarrassed," he said.

"Embarrassed?" She laughed, but he did not smile. She sobered again.

"I thought you understood," he said. "You did understand, did you not, Judith? That this is just a Christmas flirtation?"

Her hand stilled against his cheek. She frowned slightly. "No," she said. "No, Max. Don't do this. It is not fu

"It was understood from the start, was it not?" he said. "You are a widow and young and it is Christmas. I thought… but perhaps I did not make myself clear."

"Max." She withdrew her hand from his cheek and pounded the edge of her fist once against his chest. "Don't be silly. Do you think to frighten me only so that you can laugh at me? Do you think to make me doubt what this has been? Don't be silly. And don't spoil it. Tell me you love me. Tell me."

He set the back of one hand over his eyes. "Judith," he said. "I am so sorry. I had no idea that your feelings were involved. I had no idea. I thought you felt as I did."

She lay very still, looking into his face, though his eyes were still covered by the back of his hand. And it was as if a giant hand had lifted the cottage up and off its foundations and they had been exposed to all the chill of a winter's day and the cutting force of the wind. She felt cold to the very heart.

And she knew-she had known from his first word though she had fought against the knowledge-that he was not teasing, that he would not the next moment reach out to pull her to him and laugh away her fears. She knew that she had been right about him from the start. She knew that she had been made his victim, that she had made herself his victim.

For it was not a Christmas flirtation. And it was certainly not Christmas love. It was vengeance from hell and had nothing to do with Christmas at all. She understood it all at last in a blinding flash.