The River of No Return

looked up at him in surprise. “Because . . .” She contemplated her interlaced fingers.
    “Because?”
    “I desire you?” She frowned at her fingers.
    He reached out and touched her cheek. “My darling, you are talking like a courtesan and pouting like a girl.”
    “Very well.” She raised her chin but looked past his shoulder at the treetops. “I desire you. I am twenty-two and a virgin. I wish to learn . . .” She stopped, and he waited. She was afraid she sounded entirely foolish, but she soldiered on. “You gave me a poem in which a gentleman offers to teach a lady. What did you expect? That I would simply faint away in shock? That my eyes would shrivel in my head? I think that gentleman is much like you, and I am much like his mistress. I would like you to teach me.” She looked down again at her hands. “Now, are you going to oblige me, or shall we dismiss the notion? I will not beg you.”
    “You have no idea how very much I wish to oblige you. But . . .” She looked up and his eyes seemed to cloud over. “I have been away for so long, and living such a different life. Among different women.”
    “In Spain.”
    He was silent for a long time before he answered, and she could see that he was aching to tell her something. But when he spoke he simply repeated her words. “In Spain,” he said.
    As he said it, she realized what he was suppressing: he could travel in time. He had not been lost for three years in Spain. He had been lost in time. And for quite a bit longer than three years. That was why he looked older than he should. She looked at him with new knowledge. How old was he? Thirty? Thirty-five?
    “Are women so very different from me . . . in Spain?”
    Humor and regret combined in his expression. “It is a foreign country,” he said. “They do things differently there. I do things differently there.” He pressed his lips tightly together, opened them to speak, then closed them again. She was glad he didn’t tell her the truth; she wanted this moment to be uncomplicated by revelation. Instead, he clasped her fingers, pressing her hand to his cheek. “But now I am back. I am confronted with a beautiful woman whom I hold in the very highest esteem. She wishes to become my lover. And you should be impressed with my self-control,” he said, his voice getting a little rough.
    “Self-control is the last thing I desire from you.” She put her other hand on his chest. “Shall I be plainer in my speech? If I do not have reservations, why should you?” She let her hand drift down until it rested on his stomach. “‘There is no penance due to innocence.’”
    He released her hand and stroked her hair. She felt his stomach flex with every movement of his arm. “Far back in my memory,” he said, “almost as if it were a dream, I seem to recall something. Some rule of chivalry. Ah, yes. A gentleman must never take a young lady’s virtue.”
    Julia leaned forward until she could whisper in his ear: “And that is all it was.” She pulled back and gazed into his eyes. “Just a dream.”
    His eyes glinted. He pulled her face recklessly to his and kissed her mouth.
    He toppled back against the cushions, dragging her with him, and she was tossed like a boat on a stormy sea, her hands thrusting into his hair as he kissed her. He pushed her sleeves from her shoulders and kissed her collarbone, and then his hands slid firmly down her back until they met the flare of her hips. “Glory,” he murmured in her ear, his touch growing lighter as he fanned his hands across her bottom. “Such loveliness . . .” He let his hands roam. She arched her back, gasping, and found that she was pressing her belly against the long muscle that was straining between his legs. He smiled dreamily into her face, his calm expression at odds with the urgency of his caresses. She could feel the muslin of her dress tickling up her calves; he was stroking it higher as his hands moved.
    “Nicholas . . .” She heard herself breathe his name as her hem skimmed above her knees.
    “Yes, my lovely girl . . .” He bit her shoulder gently.
    “Do you remember how the poem ends?”
    “Shhh . . .” He kissed her, pulling her dress higher still. “Let’s make our own poetry. . . .”
    She couldn’t help it; she laughed.
    His eyes widened. “You scoff at me in the middle of your maiden voyage?”
    “Yes, but that was just such a ridiculous thing to say, Nick.” She felt his cock leap