The River of No Return

Darchester, Nick?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “‘ Facta non verba. ’”
    “Deeds, not words,” he translated.
    Julia nodded. “Please,” she whispered.
    Another heartbeat as his eyes searched hers. Then his hands released her and slid softly down her arms. She reached and drew his face down to her, kissing him. He stroked a hand over her breast, past her waist, and feathered his fingers across her thigh, then brushed his hand lightly across the place between her legs.
    He whispered endearments that she couldn’t quite hear. It felt luscious and wicked—she bit her lip and closed her eyes; she was poised, sweetly, between the quick, light action of his thumb and the firm, slow movement of his fingers. She gasped with each breath, his murmuring voice keeping her from spinning away. Then his whispers broke into a groan, and his hand thrust and she tightened—and burst exquisitely, like a summer berry. Was that her voice crying out? She shuddered, pressing up against him.
    He was positioning himself between her legs. Again he touched her with his thumb, and she thrummed with pleasure even as she felt herself stretch to allow him in. Caught there between bliss and pain, she watched his face. His eyes were closed in concentration as slowly, slowly, he entered her. It felt impossible, and it felt wonderful, and edged with alarm. Then, just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he stopped pressing forward, and his serious, passion-dark eyes opened. “I love you,” he said.
    With quick intent, he pushed forward past a barrier she hadn’t known was there—and she cried out even as the sharpness gave way to a honey-sweet ache. He kissed her, spoke softly in her ear, stroked her hair, and held very still. Then he began to pull away, and she cried out “No,” wanting him back again. He eased himself into her once more, smiling down at her. She clung to him as he moved in her. She was flying up and up with him in widening circles, gripped by an exquisite vertigo that sang along every nerve; he clasped her to him and she felt him shudder and thrust in more deeply than before; she toppled off some high, windblown ledge of pleasure into a deep, endless sea that was all the shifting colors of his eyes.
    * * *
    The bayonet was his own hand and his nails were ripping, catching . . . and now he was flying away, backward, into a tunnel of smoke at hideous speed, and at the distant end of the tunnel the splash of red and the young man’s black eyes fixing in death. . . .
    There was something pulling him back, something holding him. Instead of the Frenchman’s face at the end of the tunnel he saw a pair of dark eyes. Julia was speaking his name, quietly, and he realized he could hear it—“Nicholas . . .”—piercing the horrible silence of the dream. The power that was drawing him backward into an unknown future died, as abruptly as a wind can die. Nick awoke, fully. Julia was lying half on top of him, stroking his hair, one leg tossed over his thighs, her breasts resting on his chest. Behind her tousled head and through the glass panes of the cupola he could see the late-afternoon sky, a few clouds drifting across it.
    “Hello, Sleeping Beauty.” Julia brushed her knuckles down his cheek. “You were dreaming. A bad one?”
    Nick breathed in deeply, through his nose. He exhaled slowly, letting the air hiss between his teeth.
    “Was it Badajoz?”
    Her face was alive with that just-loved look and flushed with health. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    Julia reached down and traced the puckered scar on his thigh. “You don’t have to,” she said.
    He didn’t have much feeling there, but still, her touch tickled the edges of the old wound. The feeling shocked him into sudden realization. He was lying, naked and entwined, with an unmarried woman of gentle birth he had just deflowered. They had just had sex. “Julia.”
    “Yes.”
    “I . . .” He moved his hand to the back of her head and drew her face down to his for a long kiss. His cock stirred beneath her hip.
    She drew back and brushed the tip of her nose against his. “Mmm,” she said. “Do you think it’s very late? Is there time to . . .” She grinned. “You know. . . .”
    He opened his eyes wide. “I have no idea to what you’re referring, Miss Percy.”
    She wiggled herself to the right until she was firmly on top of him. His cock strained against her belly. “You have no idea?” she whispered. “Are you