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She was trembling now, and his loins were heavy and hot and more than ready.
But he wasn’t done, and only the present could be trusted. This moment might be all he had. And so again he kissed and savored, all the way to her toes and back.
Then he trailed his tongue over the velvety skin just above the dark nest of curls between her legs.
“You’re beautiful, Jess,” he said thickly. “Every inch of you.” He slid his fingers into the damp, dusky curls.
She moaned.
He brought his mouth to the warm, moist core.
She gave a low cry, and her fingers caught in his hair.
The feminine cry of pleasure sang in his veins. The rich scent and taste of Woman flooded his senses. She was all he wanted in the world, and she was his, wanting him, slick and hot for him.
He worshipped her with his mouth for wanting him. He pleasured her for the delirious joy of doing so, until her hands fisted in his hair and she cried out his name, and he felt the tremors shake her.
Then, finally, he sheathed himself in her hotly welcoming softness, and joined her.
Then the world shook for him as well, and if it had ended in that instant, he would have gone to damnation happily, because she clung to him and kissed him as though there were no tomorrow and she would hold and want him forever.
And when the world exploded, and he spilled himself into her, it was as though his soul spilled, too, and he would have given up that soul gladly, if that were the price for the moment of pure happiness she gave him.
The next day, Jessica gave him the icon.
Dain found it at his place when he came into the breakfast room. It stood between his coffee cup and the plate. Even in the weak light of an overcast morning, pearls shimmered, topaz and rubies sparkled, diamonds shot rainbow sparks. Beneath the glimmering golden halo, the grey-eyed Madonna smiled wistfully upon the scowling infant in her arms.
A small, folded piece of notepaper was tucked under the bottom of the jeweled frame. His heart racing, Dain took it out and opened it.
“Happy Birthday,” it read. That was all.
He looked up from the note to his wife, who sat opposite, her sleek hair framed by the hazy light from the window.
She was buttering a piece of scone, oblivious, as usual, to the cataclysm she’d just set off.
“Jess.” He could scarcely force the one syllable past his tight throat.
“Yes?” She set down the knife and spooned a lump of preserves onto the scone.
He thumbed frantically through his mental dictionary, looking for words, but he couldn’t find what he wanted because he didn’t know what he was looking for.
“Jess.”
The bit of scone paused halfway to her lips. She looked at him.
Dain pointed at the icon.
She looked at that. “Oh. Well, better late than never, I thought. And yes, I know it isn’t truly a gift because it belongs to you anyway. Everything of mine—or nearly everything—became yours legally when we wed. But we shall have to pretend, because I hadn’t time to think of, let alone find, a suitable birthday present.” She popped the buttered and lavishly sweetened tidbit into her mouth…as though everything had been thoroughly explained and settled and not a single fragment of the sky had fallen.
For the first time, Dain had an inkling of what it must feel like to be Bertie Trent, owning the necessary human quantity of grey matter, but possessing no notion how to make it function. Perhaps, Dain thought, Trent hadn’t been born that way after all. Perhaps he had simply been incapacitated by a lifetime of explosions.
Perhaps the term femme fatale ought to be taken more literally. Perhaps it was the brain she was fatal to.
Not my brain, Dain resolved. She is not going to turn me into a blithering imbecile.
He could handle this. He could sort it out. He was merely taken aback, that was all. The last birthday present he’d received had come from his mother, when he was eight. The tart Wardell and Mallory had supplied on Birthday Thirteen didn’t count, because Dain had wound up having to pay for her.
He was surprised, no more. Greatly surprised, admittedly, because he’d truly believed Jessica would sooner throw the icon into a cauldron of boiling acid than let him have it. He hadn’t even asked about it during the marriage negotiations, because he’d assumed she’d sold it long since, and he’d adamantly refused to let himself imagine or hope, even for one half second, that she hadn’t.
“This is a…delightful surprise,” he said, as any intelligent adult would say in the circumstances. “Grazie. Thank you.”
She smiled. “I knew you would understand.”
“I cannot possibly understand all the implications and symbolic significance,” he said very, very calmly. “But then, I am a male, and my brain is too primitive for such complicated calculations. I can see, however—as I did as soon as the filth had been removed—that it is an exquisite work of art, and I doubt I shall ever grow tired of looking at it.”
That was gracious, he thought. Adult. Intelligent. Reasonable. He had only to keep his hand upon the table and it would not tremble.
“I hoped you would feel so,” she said. “I was sure you’d recognized how remarkable and rare it was. That’s because it’s more evocative, do you not agree, than the usual run of Stroganovs, fine as they are.”
“Evocative.” He gazed at the richly painted figures. Even now, though it was his, he was uneasy, unwilling to lose himself in it or examine the feelings it evoked.
She rose and came to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“When I first saw it, after it had been repaired and cleaned, I was much affected,” she said. “The sensations were very odd. Apparently, at this level of artistry, I am out of my depth. You are the connoisseur. I am merely a species of magpie, and I am not always certain why my eye is drawn to certain objects, even when I have no doubt of their value.”
He glanced up, bewildered. “You are asking me to explain what makes this so extraordinary?”
“Besides the unusual color of her eyes,” she said. “And the lavish use of gold. And the workmanship. None of these explains why it elicits such strong emotion.”
“It elicits strong emotion in you because you are sentimental,” he said. Reluctantly he brought his eyes back to the icon.
He cleared his throat and continued in the patient tones of a tutor. “One is accustomed to the classic Russian pout. But this is altogether different, you see. Baby Jesus looks truly cross and sulky, as though he’s tired of posing, or hungry—or merely wants attention. And his mama doesn’t wear the conventional tragic expression. She’s half-frowning, yes. Mildly irritated, perhaps, because the boy’s being troublesome. Yet she wears a glimmer of a smile, as though to reassure or forgive him. Because she understands that he doesn’t know any better. Innocent brat, he takes it all for granted: her smiles and reassurances, her patience…forgiveness. He doesn’t know what he has, let alone how to be grateful for it. And so he frets and scowls…in blissful infant ignorance.”
Dain paused, for the room seemed to have grown too quiet suddenly, and the woman beside him too still.
“It is altogether natural and human a pose,” he went on, careful to keep his tone light and neutral. “We forget that this pair represent holy figures, and focus instead upon the simple human drama within the artistic conventions and rich trappings. If this Madonna and child were merely saintly, the work would not be half so rare and interesting.”
“I see what you mean,” his wife said softly. “The artist has captured his models’ personalities, and the mother’s love for her little boy, and the mood of a moment between them.”
“That is what awakens your sentiment,” he said. “Even I find them intriguing, and can’t resist theorizing about what their countenances express—though they’re long dead, and the truth hardly signifies. That is the artist’s talent: He makes one wonder. It’s rather as though he played a joke on the viewer, isn’t it?”
Glanc
ing up from the icon at Jessica, he made himself laugh, as though this heartachingly beautiful portrait of maternal love were merely an amusing artistic riddle.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I knew there was more to it than met my untrained eye,” she said, too gently. “You are so perceptive, Dain.” Then she quickly moved away and returned to her seat.
