Redemption - Leon Uris [71]
The lodge was small but perfected, with the elegance of an earldom stamped all over it. Once inside, Conor realized this was Caroline’s private domain. The stuffed animal heads were gone in a transition from a man’s place for killing deer to a sensual affair.
Caroline knew she was a small matter as artists went, but here she could get rid of her frustration. Her paintings followed bad lines but burst forth with unmistakable erotica. A tidy but well-chosen library spoke of gods making love and men and women imitating the gods in all sorts of ways. The room was softened by silk and the floor was laid with beckoning fur.
Conor became a bit nervous as his eyes played over the room. There had never been whispers of any kind about Caroline engaging in nefarious trysts or infidelity. This place was wild. Conor was not the only one who knew how to play with light and shadows. Certainly she had brought her husband here, and it suddenly disturbed him.
“Now, would you be wanting these windows barred to keep poachers out of here or to lock them in?”
“I have forbidden hunting within sight and sound of this lodge. As for the salmon, I don’t care if the poachers steal the streams dry. I want to be left alone here and be as totally made as you were three months ago. Yes, Roger comes here and sometimes we find lightning for an instant, but I always leave, wanting. Any questions?”
“I was very proud of myself the day I left Hubble Manor,” Conor said. “I thought I had come through this free. I had practiced the restraint of a saint. But I climb the steps to my loft, turn down the lamp each night, and grip the bars of my headboard and shake. I’m still a prisoner as I have been since I was twelve. This past two months have been worse than the twelve years put together. And these last three years I must have been soothed by the mere sight of you.”
“Well, croppy boy, you need wait no longer.”
They fit into each other’s arms as though their bodies had been molded in a master’s workshop, to perfection, and he held her like a precious bird, not to crush her and not to let her go. They rocked gently and rocked and sighed and sighed more deeply and held a bit tighter.
“Tuesdays,” she said, “you always worked late. I knew you would be alone at night and I would wait all day with my heart in my mouth till your crew left, then I’d slip out on the balcony and watch you wash up and put your shirt back on.”
“I knew you were watching,” he said.
“I knew you knew, and you took your time.”
All of the fierceness came out in the most gentle kisses and exploration. Their hunger was vast and had to be fed slowly. Conor’s arms were the steel and the velvet of the screen, power and tenderness. He was not the self-adoring Roman or self-flagellating Parisian. Conor Larkin was all new.
He was mysterious Ireland, so wanting and so needful of compassion. But this laid did not smother it in drink. He let it go in the sweet misty words of his poetry, the poems she had never seen.
They slipped into an easy melting and molding and tasted and teased.
Come, on croppy lad, I’ve a few things of my own to show you…and I’m going to…
She backed off.
Come and get it, she thought…slowly…to the brink…
She turned away, walked till the fireplace halted her, faced him and took her blouse apart, laying her breasts open for him to gaze upon. They were still gorgeous, almost like those of a young lass.
Now, take them, Conor, no gift will ever be so glorious…just reach…just take them now…they are pleading for your touch, Conor.
“We’ve been on fire from the moment you first stepped into my forge. I’m clear faint with passion, Caroline. We shouldn’t have willed this to happen.”
“I don’t want to hear any bloody Catholic guilt now!” She took his hands and placed them on her. His thumbs and forefingers whispered over her nipples and they burst out…and he slipped down and tasted them as though they were the most precious of breasts, like from a perfect statue.
An exquisite nip shot sensation