Before she could move away he leaned forward, gripped her arms near the shoulders and clamped her body between his legs, holding her firmly. Her rage vanished at once; she flattened her palms on his thighs and lifted her face. But he didn’t kiss her. He let go of her arms and twisted to switch off the lamp behind him, then relaxed his hold on her and laid his head back against the chair, so that she wasn’t sure if he had dimmed the room down to glowing coals as the first move in his love-making, or simply to conceal his expression. Uncertain, afraid of outright rejection, she waited to be told what to do. She should have realized earlier that one didn’t tamper with people like Rain. They were as invincible as death. Why couldn’t she put her head on his lap and say: Rain, love me, I need you so much and I’m so sorry? Oh, surely if she could get him to make love to her some emotional key would turn and it would all come tumbling out, released…

Still withdrawn, remote, he let her take off his jacket and tie, but by the time she began to unbutton his shirt she knew it wasn’t going to work. The kind of instinctive erotic skills which could make the most mundane operation exciting were not in her repertoire. This was so important, and she was making an absolute mess of it. Her fingers faltered, her mouth puckered. She burst into tears.

“Oh, no! Herzchen, liebchen, don’t cry!” He pulled her onto his lap and turned her head into his shoulder, his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Herzchen, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“Now you know,” she said between sobs. “I’m a miserable failure; I told you it wouldn’t work! Rain, I wanted so badly to keep you, but I knew it wouldn’t work if I let you see how awful I am!”

“No, of course it wouldn’t work. How could it? I wasn’t helping you, Herzchen.” He tugged at her hair to bring her face up to his, kissed her eyelids, her wet cheeks, the corners of her mouth. “It’s my fault, Herzchen, not yours. I was paying you back; I wanted to see how far you could go without encouragement. But I think I have mistaken your motives, nicht wahr?” His voice had grown thicker, more German. “And I say, if this is what you want you shall have it, but it shall be together.”

“Please, Rain, let’s call it off! I haven’t got what it takes. I’ll only disappoint you!”

“Oh, you’ve got it, Herzchen, I’ve seen it on the stage. How can you doubt yourself when you’re with me?”

Which was so right her tears dried.

“Kiss me the way you did in Rome,” she whispered. Only it wasn’t like the kiss in Rome at all. That had been something raw, startled, explosive; this was very languorous and deep, an opportunity to taste and smell and feel, settle by layers into voluptuous ease. Her fingers returned to the buttons, his went to the zipper of her dress, then he covered her hand with his and thrust it inside his shirt, across skin matted with fine soft hair. The sudden hardening of his mouth against her throat brought a helpless response so acute she felt faint, thought she was falling and found she had, flat on the silky rug with Rain looming above her. His shirt had come off, perhaps more, she couldn’t see, only the fire glancing off his shoulders spread over her, and the beautiful stern mouth. Determined to destroy its discipline for all time, she locked her fingers in his hair and made him kiss her again, harder, harder!

And the feel of him! Like coming home, recognizing every part of him with her lips and hands and body, yet fabulous and strange. While the world sank down to the minute width of the firelight lapping against darkness, she opened herself to what he wanted, and learned something he had kept entirely concealed for as long as she had known him; that he must have made love to her in imagination a thousand times. Her own experience and newborn intuition told her so. She was completely disarmed. With any other man the intimacy and astonishing sensuality would have appalled her, but he forced her to see that these were things only she had the right to command. And command them she did. Until finally she cried for him to finish it, her arms about him so strongly she could feel the contours of his very bones.

The minutes wore away, wrapped in a sated peace. They had fallen into an identical rhythm of breathing, slow and easy, his head against her shoulder, her leg thrown across him. Gradually her rigid clasp on his back relaxed, became a dreamy, circular caress. He sighed, turned over and reversed the way they were lying, quite unconsciously inviting her to slide still deeper into the pleasure of being with him. She put her palm on his flank to feel the texture of his skin, slid her hand across warm muscle and cupped it around the soft, heavy mass in his groin. To feel the curiously alive, independent movements within it was a sensation quite new to her; her past lovers had never interested her sufficiently to want to prolong her sexual curiosity to this languid and undemanding aftermath. Yet suddenly it wasn’t languid and undemanding at all, but so enormously exciting she wanted him all over again.

Still she was taken unaware, knew a suffocated surprise when he slipped his arms across her back, took her head in his hands and held her close enough to see there was nothing controlled about his mouth, shaped now solely because of her, and for her. Tenderness and humility were literally born in her in that moment. It must have shown in her face, for he was gazing at her with eyes grown so bright she couldn’t bear them, and bent over to take his upper lip between her own. Thoughts and senses merged at last, but her cry was smothered soundless, an unuttered wail of gladness which shook her so deeply she lost awareness of everything beyond impulse, the mindless guidance of each urgent minute. The world achieved its ultimate contraction, turned in upon itself, and totally disappeared.

* * *

Rainer must have kept the fire going, for when gentle London daylight soaked through the folds of the curtains the room was still warm. This time when he moved Justine became conscious of it, and clutched his arm fearfully.

“Don’t go!”

“I’m not, Herzchen.” He twitched another pillow from the sofa, pushed it behind his head and shifted her closer in to his side, sighing softly. “All right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you cold?”

“No, but if you are we could go to bed.”

“After making love to you for hours on a fur rug? What a comedown! Even if your sheets are black silk.”

“They’re ordinary old white ones, cotton. This bit of Drogheda is all right, isn’t it?”

“Bit of Drogheda?”

“The rug! It’s made of Drogheda kangaroos,” she explained.

“Not nearly exotic or erotic enough. I’ll order you a tiger skin from India.”

“Reminds me of a poem I heard once:

Would you like to sin

With Elinor Glyn

On a tiger skin?

Or would you prefer

To err with her

On some other fur?

“Well, Herzchen, I must say it’s high time you bounced back! Between the demands of Eros and Morpheus, you haven’t been flippant in half a day.” He smiled.

“I don’t feel the need at the moment,” she said with an answering smile, settling his hand comfortably between her legs. “The tiger skin doggerel just popped out because it was too good to resist, but I haven’t got a single skeleton left to hide from you, so there’s not much point in flippancy, is there?” She sniffed, suddenly aware of a faint odor of stale fish drifting on the air. “Heavens, you didn’t get any dinner and now it’s time for breakfast! I can’t expect you to live on love!”

“Not if you expect such strenuous demonstrations of it, anyway.”

“Go on, you enjoyed every moment of it.”

“Indeed I did.” He sighed, stretched, yawned. “I wonder if you have any idea how happy I am.”

“Oh, I think so,” she said quietly.

He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. “Tell me, was Desdemona the only reason you came back to London?”

Grabbing his ear, she tweaked it painfully. “Now it’s my turn to pay you back for all those headmasterish questions! What do you think?”

He prized her fingers away easily, grinning. “If you don’t answer me, Herzchen, I’ll strangle you far more permanently than Marc does.”

“I came back to London to do Desdemona, but because of you. I haven’t been able to call my life my own since you kissed me in Rome, and well you know it. You’re a very intelligent man, Rainer Moerling Hartheim.”

“Intelligent enough to have known I wanted you for my wife almost the first moment I saw you,” he said.

She sat up quickly. “Wife?”

“Wife. If I’d wanted you for my mistress I’d have taken you years ago, and I could have. I know how your mind works; it would have been relatively easy. The only reason I didn’t was because I wanted you for my wife and I knew you weren’t ready to accept the idea of a husband.”

“I don’t know that I am now,” she said, digesting it.

He got to his feet, pulling her up to stand against him. “Well, you can put in a little practice by getting me some breakfast. If this was my house I’d do the honors, but in your kitchen you’re the cook.”

“I don’t mind getting your breakfast this morning, but theoretically to commit myself until the day I die?” She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s my cup of tea, Rain.”

It was the same Roman emperor’s face, and imperially unperturbed by threats of insurrection. “Justine, this is not something to play with, nor am I someone to play with. There’s plenty of time. You have every reason to know I can be patient. But get it out of your head entirely that this can be settled in any way but marriage. I have no wish to be known as anyone less important to you than a husband.”