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“Why?” I demand, lip trembling though I wish it would not. “Because I’m going to poison your mind with my half-Jewish thoughts?”
His jaw drops and then he reaches out and pulls me inside the door, shutting it quickly behind him. His eyes flash the brightest, most livid blue. “It’s not me who will be damaged by the talk, Marie!” he hisses, grabbing my arms. “That’s why you shouldn’t be here. You can’t have thought I believed that nonsense?”
“What else am I supposed to think?” I demand. “You meet with the council and just as soon you’re telling me to go on about my business and leave you alone. Don’t worry. I’m not here to beg you to reconsider. If you’re that easily swayed, you never deserved me.”
He presses me to the door, his hands cradling my jaw. “I wasn’t swayed,” he says. “It terrified me. If the people in this town realized how I feel about you, God knows what would happen.”
I hear true fear in his voice and stiffen. “What do you mean?”
“They threatened you, Marie. I couldn’t say anything because Irene was there, and I’m fairly certain she was the one who complained. But they said if I won’t remove the poison, they’ll cut it out themselves. And by poison, they mean you.”
I swallow, my pulse fluttering in my throat. I still want to be angry, but mostly I’d like to cry right now. It hurt me so much to believe, for even a moment, that he didn’t care. My eyes well. “So you don’t think I’m poison?”
“I think,” he whispers, “that you are the only thing right in the entire world at the moment. But I’d die before I saw any harm come to you.”
I’m happy but have an odd desire to cry at the same time. I’ve gone from being certain of him to devastated and back again. Why does this all have to be so hard? We’re both adults. He’s trying to leave his post. Why is nothing ever straightforward? “Please don’t ever do that again,” I whisper. “No matter what you think the result might be, don’t treat me like that.”
His lips press, first to forehead, then my eyelids and temples.
“I just want you to be safe,” he says. “Don’t you understand? I’d sacrifice every person in this town and everything I’ve ever loved just to know you would survive the war.”
I tip my head toward him and his mouth finds mine. The kiss is soft, but I feel the way he’s restraining himself. And when my mouth opens under his, when I sigh, that restraint begins to fail him. His lips move to my jaw, my cheeks, my neck. His palm slides from the small of my back, then goes lower, pulling me against him. He's hard again, but it’s only when his lips pull hard at the skin of my neck and I gasp that he comes to a sudden stop.
His chest rises and falls quickly. “I need to get you out of here without anyone seeing,” he says, flinching. “Until you’re safely out of this town we can’t be seen anywhere near each other.”
My body is on fire. His hands are inside my coat, tight on my hips. I want to feel them sliding inside my dress again. I want to do what I did to him last night but watch as it happens.
I glance up. “You wanted time with me alone, before,” I whisper shyly. “And now you have me alone. Do you no longer want that?”
His gaze holds mine before it drifts to my lips and in a second’s time something between us changes. A visceral snap of electricity, a spark, and then he is pressed against me, his lips on mine, all his uncertainty absent. His hands rise until they’re at the base of my breasts. I arch toward him and he groans low as he gives in, stops resisting me at last. He explores, squeezes, thumbs passing over my taut nipples. “My God Marie,” he groans. “My God. You need to stop me.”
His desperation, the way he is barely clinging to his restraint, is unexpectedly thrilling.
“I don’t want you to stop,” I whisper. I shrug off my coat. My fingers go to the top button of my dress and his eyes follow. As that button opens, as the second one follows. His mouth falls open, his gaze unfocused.
“Do you want me to keep going?” I ask.
Instead of answering, his fingers replace mine, unbuttoning the third button and then the fourth, until he can push the dress off my shoulders. He gazes at me, naked to the waist but for my bra, as if I’m a holy object of devotion. The shroud of Turin, perhaps.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says hoarsely, his fingers brushing the seam of my bra, index finger dipping inside it. His palm is rough against my skin, exquisite, yet it’s his eyes that flutter closed, as if I’m the one who’s touching him.
I reach behind me and unzip the dress, allowing it to fall to the floor.
“Marie,” he gasps. His voice is a plea and a warning.
“I’m tired of this town. I’m tired of all the ridiculous rules.”
He wants to resist me but already his eyes are dancing over my skin, from my breasts to my waist to the curve of my hips. I slide my hands inside his shirt, against that hard chest I’ve wanted to lean against for what feels like my entire life. He’s every bit as firm beneath my hands as I imagined.
His mouth moves to mine again, harder and rougher and more demanding than it was, and suddenly he lifts me, wrapping my legs around his waist, and carries me to his room.
He lays me down gently.
Oh my God. After all these years I’m really in Edouard’s bed.
I barely have time to think it before he’s above me. He swallows as I reach up to unbutton his shirt, and once I’ve reached the third button, he pulls it over his head. He’s perfect, all lean muscle and long lines, and the look in his eyes is decidedly carnal, as if he wants to eat me whole. I’ve seen him at the altar a thousand times, but it’s suddenly impossible to imagine how he ever became a priest. I reach up, letting my hand trace the curve of each muscle.
“You’re perfect,” I whisper.
