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His face was stark, emptied of everything.
His eyes were dead.
Her heart was crushed again in its vice.
She took a faltering step towards him. Holding out her hands to him.
Making her choice.
And as she did so the emotion that had flowed in around her heart seemed to swell and flood, flood out all through her, like a great, cleansing wave. Washing everything away.
Her shame. Her guilt. Her anger. Her hatred.
She went to him. Wrapped hers arms around him, holding him so tight, so very tight against her, leaning her cheek against his dust-stained sweaty shirt.
For a moment, so long it felt like an eternity he stayed frozen, immobile. And then slowly, very slowly, she felt his arms come around her. Haltingly at first, and then suddenly with a desperation that crushed her to him, bands of steel fastening her against him.
She felt him shudder, the breath raking through his body. She held him tighter, and more tightly yet. How long she held him she did not know. Knew only that she would never let him go. Could never let him go.
She felt tears spill from her eyes. That high, broken sob came again.
‘Portia! No—don’t cry. Dear God, don’t cry!’
But she cried all the more, an ocean of tears.
His arms around her loosened. Gentled. His hand slid up to her head, stroking her hair.
‘Don’t cry, Portia. Please don’t cry.’
She lifted her head. Blindly, instinctively, she reached upward.
He could not stop himself.
He kissed her, taking her uplifted mouth, crushing her to him.
The heat of midday made her little room an oven. She didn’t care. The fires of hell could have burnt around her and she would still have been in heaven. She smoothed the sweat-stained shirt from him, kissing his body. She felt him shudder.
She drew him down onto the narrow bed, her arms winding around him.
‘Portia—’ The hoarseness in his voice tore at her.
‘I want you so much,’ she told him. ‘So much…’
The little bed could hardly hold them both. They did not care. With slow rapture they found each other’s bodies. He spoke to her in Spanish—soft, wondering phrases that she only half understood, and yet she knew he had never spoken them before.
This was a new world for them both.
Only as he lay within her, and her body glowed like the sun, did he pause and tense, his voice grating as he gasped aloud, the words torn from him.
‘I can’t! I can’t hold back—’
He surged within her and she arched to meet him, igniting at his flame, burning in the same golden purifying fire. An eternity of ecstasy.
Later, much later, they lay together in each other’s arms.
For a long, long time they said nothing, only lay in the sheltering cradle of their embrace. Then slowly, haltingly, Diego spoke.
‘You are my life, Portia. For all my life, you are my life. Whatever happens now, whatever my fate is to be, it is in your hands.’
