Part 54 (2/2)

”No,” she confessed, recalling those nights she slipped over to the rectory and gave her body to him. ”It felt like a privilege.”

”That's what it felt like to me,” Nico said. ”When you needed me last night? A privilege. An honor.”

”What are you saying, Nico?” Nora asked.

”I need you.”

He touched her face, her lips.

”I need you,” he said again. ”You're everything I ever dreamed of in one woman. My Rosanella. Beautiful, graceful, intelligent, fearless, and yet you trembled in my arms during the storm and then you drank me from a winegla.s.s. You owned me last night with everything you did to me and everything you let me do to you. No one on this earth deserves to have everything they desire. No one is ent.i.tled to have what he wants. But if I were to have what I wanted, I would need you to give it to me. Because it's you, Mistress Nora.”

Nora couldn't look at Nico. Hearing him call her Mistress Nora was like hearing S0ren call her ”Little One” for the first time, like learning her real name. After she'd told Nico who his father was, he'd asked her for Kingsley's last name. ”Nicholas Boissonneault,” he'd said, his eyes s.h.i.+ning with unshed tears as he tried out his new name. It hurt to learn who he was. It hurt her, too, but for a different reason.

”Go to sleep, my love.” She kissed him on the forehead. ”It's an order. You have a long drive back.”

”What will you do?”

”I don't know yet,” she said. ”But I'll be okay. I always am.”

Nico's eyelashes fluttered and in minutes his breathing settled into the deep rhythms of sleep. She gazed down at him, at this beautiful young man in her bed with callouses on his hands from the hard work he did every day. She'd never loved a man with calloused hands before. She had callouses, however. The callous on her finger from so much writing. The callous on her heart from so much loving.

She dragged herself from the bed and found her nightgown. She pulled a book from her suitcase and took it downstairs with her.

After building up the fire again, she curled into a chair. Carefully so as not to let any papers fall out, she opened her Bible.

More and more lately she found herself turning to this book for comfort and guidance. Queen Esther still enchanted her, as did Ruth and her thres.h.i.+ng floor seduction of Boaz. The Psalms brought her solace-”Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” King David and King Solomon spoke to her from ages past-two adulterers who found their way into the lineage of Christ. And how she loved Isaiah and the words that had become so much more meaningful to her of late-”For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given.”

But it wasn't the words of the Bible that she turned to in this last hour of night. From its pages she pulled a photograph, a child barely a year old with his mother's turquoise eyes and his father's blond hair.

She stared at the photograph of Fionn in her hand. In it her editor, Zach, held his son on his shoulder. The first time she'd held the boy in her own arms, the sudden depth of love she had for him had shaken her like fear. She'd trembled so hard she had to give him back to Grace almost immediately.

”If anyone ever tries to hurt that boy I will burn their world down,” she'd said to Zach. ”But please never ask me to babysit.”

Zach had laughed and pulled her into a tender embrace, not caring that his wife stood five feet away watching and rolling her eyes at the both of them. They were long past jealousy and shared only joy among them all.

”Born to be a soldier, not a politician,” Zach had teased her, then kissed her quick on the lips.

”What do you mean?” she'd asked.

Zach had looked into her eyes and smiled.

”Love the risk, hate the responsibility.”

She hadn't argued. Zach knew her all too well by now.

Nora studied the boy in the photograph. She'd shown the picture to Nico once after showing him a picture of his newly acquired half sister Celeste.

”My G.o.dson,” she'd said with pride.

”He doesn't take after his father,” Nico had said, noting Zach's black hair and Fionn's blond locks.

”He does actually,” she'd said with a secret smile. ”So let's pray he gets his personality from his mother.”

She needed to look at Fionn's picture right now. That little face of his with those wide, watching eyes consoled her more than any words of any song or psalm or prayer could right now. Death had come to her house and stolen a precious thing from her. But life had won this round. Fionn was her victory banner.

Knowing that he lived, that a new generation had already come into the world to fill the shoes of the lost, Nora could now look at the silver box on the mantel without denial or fear or regret. One death. One life. And so it would go until death died.

Nora closed her Bible, held it to her chest and for a while she dozed in the chair. She woke a few hours later, s.h.i.+vering from cold. Her fire had died again. She set her Bible aside and returned upstairs.

Standing by the bed, she watched Nico sleeping. What did vintners on the Mediterranean Sea dream of-the wine or the water? Did he dream of her? She'd never met a man like Nico, a man at complete and utter peace with himself. He loved older women, s.e.xual submission, his wine and his work. He made no apologies and offered no explanations for any of it. He had never battled with demons. He'd never wrestled with angels. He stood upon the earth immune to h.e.l.l's seductions, untroubled by heaven's demands.

Nico should have hated her, after all. Only last year the man he knew as his father had died. And when she'd come bearing the news another man had sired him, it was, as he said, like losing his beloved father a second time.

But he didn't hate her, although he'd grieved and she'd grieved with him. Instead he'd thanked her for telling her the truth about his birth and the half sister he loved the moment he learned her name. It comforted Nico to know that another man had tempted his mother, seduced her even, but she'd chosen her husband in the end. Kingsley had been grateful to Nora, as well. He'd wanted children as long as he could remember and soon after being blessed with a daughter, he learned he had a son.

”Thank you for my son,” Kingsley had said when she'd told him of Nico, told him she'd met his son and the young man was everything a father could wish for and more. Kingsley's voice, usually so suave and measured, had been hoa.r.s.e with his grat.i.tude and grief for the lost years. ”Thank you for finding him.”

Thank you for finding him. She heard those words even now in her ears. She had searched for him and sought for him and found him, and now here he was before her in the bed they'd shared. And in a few hours he would leave her.

Nora reached out and touched Nico's lips. Nico, who she and no one else had found.

”Finders keepers ...”

Nico stirred in his sleep. His eyes opened. She knelt by his shoulder and lowered her nightgown to her waist. Leaning over him she brought her breast to his mouth. He latched on to her nipple and she sighed as the pleasure rose up in her and pushed back the sadness. The dead felt nothing. That she could feel the sc.r.a.pe of his teeth, the heat of his breath on her skin, the gentle tug of his mouth, was all the proof she needed that she lived.

She s.h.i.+fted to give him her other breast as his hands roamed over her arms and down her back. Nico dragged her closer and grasped the fabric of her gown, pulling it up and off her completely. For the first time she was naked with him, completely and utterly naked.

”I need you,” she said into his ear.

”Then take me.”

She took him in her hand and guided him inside her. With her hands on his chest, she rode him. He gripped her hips as her inner muscles clamped onto his thick inches that penetrated to her core.

She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth, spiraling her hips to work him deeper into her. She stayed low over him, her hands braced on either side of his head, pus.h.i.+ng against him until he gasped and arched underneath her.

Nora lightly gripped his bare neck, not to hurt him or even hold him, but simply to touch the most vulnerable part of him at his most defenseless. Her nipples grazed his chest as she moved on him, grinding her c.l.i.toris into the base of his shaft and forcefully clenching herself around him. When she couldn't hold back anymore, she came. Her v.a.g.i.n.a fluttered with deep contractions as Nico exhaled her name. He came then, too, pouring into her, filling her with his wet heat.

Panting, Nora collapsed onto Nico's chest. He held her close, held her tight. She should have been at peace now, but she wasn't. It wasn't enough to f.u.c.k him or let him f.u.c.k her. She wanted to possess him-every part of him. She wanted to own his heart, his body, his c.o.c.k, his s.e.m.e.n, his soul, even his life. But she couldn't ask that of him, could she?

”You have to go soon, don't you?” Nora asked, once they'd both caught their breaths.

”It's a long drive back, but I'll stay until you tell me to go.”

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