stilled her hand, and then he intensified the pressure of his fingertips and she tensed, and held her body rigid. He explored further, slipped deeper into the velvet folds of her, and as he did he heard a strangled cry in her throat.
He leaned over her satin-smooth breasts, very taut and upright, and savoured the hard, erect nipples with his mouth, first one and then the other. She started to gently undulate under his expert fingers, his loving mouth, and she sighed and murmured his name softly, over and over. Now her hands went out to him again, were strong and hard on the nape of his neck and in his thick hair, and they suddenly moved on to grasp his wide shoulders as her excitement accelerated.
Paula stiffened and gasped. She was filling with an exquisite warmth. His touch quickened, became ever more nimble and deft, and she cried out in her excitement, ‘Shane, oh Shane, my darling husband, I love you so much!’ And he said against her throat, in a voice thickened by desire, ‘You’re my true love, Paula, my own true love. Come to me, my darling, so that I can take you to me.’ And she gasped again and said, ‘Yes, oh yes,’ and gripped his shoulders more tenaciously than ever.
Shane thought he was going to explode as she opened up to him like an exotic flower unfolding soft lush petals, moaning his name and shuddering. He was unable to contain himself, and he moved onto her, took possession of her swiftly, raging with the same kind of molten heat that was suffusing her.
She held him to her, as he pushed his hands under her body and lifted her to him and they cleaved together, were joined, became one.
As Shane thrust deeper, lost himself completely in her and in the joy of her, he suddenly thought: I want to make her pregnant tonight. I want another child.
This idea, unexpected as it was, sent such thrills surging through him he moved against her violently and she responded with unbridled ardour, matching his passion equally, and they quickly found their own rhythm as they had all through the years of their marriage. But for Shane, tonight was suddenly like the first time they had ever made love and in an instant the years fell away. He was back in Connecticut, in the barn he had once owned, taking her to him as he had yearned to take her during the years of her marriage to another man, loving her as he had never loved any other woman, as only he and she were meant to love.
And then he was reaching up … reaching into the light … the light was surrounding him … she was at the centre of the light … waiting for him … his dreamlike child of his childhood dreams. And she was his now. Nothing, no one, could ever separate them again. They belonged together for all time, into eternity. He felt weightless … he was soaring higher and higher … rising up into that timeless light … floating into infinity. And he was carrying her with him, holding the world in his arms, calling her name, just as she called his.
And together they crested on waves of ecstasy in the golden shimmering light … were blinded by it and then could see … and oh the blessed peace of it …
Shane woke up abruptly.
He moved his head to the right and looked at the bedside clock. In the dim light he could see that it was almost five.
Paula slept soundlessly by his side.
He braced himself on one elbow, bent over her, touched her face lovingly, but very lightly, so as not to awaken her from her exhausted sleep, and lifted a strand of hair away from her eyes. Then he settled down again, stretched out on his back and closed his eyes, but before many minutes had passed he decided he was not going to fall off again quite so easily, or as quickly as he had just imagined he would. He was suddenly wide awake. Still, he had slept very deeply for the past few hours, as he always did when he was with Paula, as if he were more content and at peace when she was in his bed. Well, of course he was.
He turned over onto his side, made an arc of his body around hers. She was his whole life, and now, lying next to her in the darkness, adoring her in the silence of his heart, he wondered if he had made her pregnant? Weeks ago they had agreed she should stop taking the pill.
Tonight he had planted his seed in her and he prayed that the seed had taken hold and would come to flower as a child … a true love child conceived at the height of passion and spiritual joining. He stifled a sigh, thinking of Patrick. He loved his little boy with a deeply tender and protective love, but he could not help being sad that their first born was not normal. He dare not let Paula perceive his feelings, for fear of underscoring her own pain, but they were never far from the surface and yet, somehow, he always managed to conceal his sorrow from her.
Instinctively, Shane lifted his right arm, put it around her, drew closer, burrowed his face in her fragrant hair, overflowing with his love for her. He closed his eyes again, let himself drift into sleep. Yes, he thought, now is the time for our next child. And he wondered, as he finally dozed off, if that was the real reason he had side-tracked her to Paris.
The Villa Faviola was situated in the town of Roquebrune-Cap Martin, approximately halfway between Monte Carlo and Menton.
It stood in its own small park at the end of the little peninsula of Cap Martin, sheltered by pines at its back, with its many tall windows facing out towards the sea.
Built in the 1920s, it was a lovely old house, sprawling, airy and gracious, with a curving driveway bordered by pines, spacious green lawns that swept down from the terrace past the swimming pool, up to the edge of the rocky promontory and the glittering Mediterranean Sea beyond.
Its exterior walls were painted a soft melon, but in a tone so pale it was almost sand, and the canvas awnings shading the windows were of a deeper melon, were partnered with shutters of pristine white.
A wide terrace stretched along the side of the house facing the sea and was made of white stone and marble, and it appeared to float gracefully above the verdant gardens where flowers grew in riotous colour and fountains sparkled in the shimmering sunlight. Scattered along the terrace were several round white-metal tables topped by melon-coloured parasols; matching white chairs, swing-sofas with sun-awnings, and chaises all had cushions of cream, and because only these soft integrated tones had been used nothing jarred the harmonious flow of pale colour across the lovely front façade.
The Villa Faviola had been purchased by Emma Harte in the late 1940s, just after the end of the Second World War, and it was she who had originally created the gardens surrounding the house and intersecting the lawns. But in recent years, Paula had enlarged the flower beds and borders and had planted a wide variety of small flowering trees and shrubs and exotic plants, cultivating the entire park to its present beauty – and a magnificence that was renowned along the Côte d’Azur.
Inside Faviola its cool, lofty rooms were filled with lovely filtered sunlight and furnished with a simple yet distinctive elegance. Charming old French Provincial pieces made of dark woods or bleached oak were mingled with vast sofas and comfortable chairs and there were chaises and ottomans, and occasional tables held small pots of African violets and pink and white cyclamen and the latest magazines and books.
Floors of highly polished parquet and rose-veined cream marble were either bare or were covered here and there by old Aubussons and plain rugs of cream wool, and throughout the house colours were pale and cool. Cream, vanilla and white predominated, flowed over the walls, were repeated in the fabrics that fell at the windows and covered sofas and chairs, and accent colours were variations of melon and peach and sand, and there were touches of café-au-lait, that lovely milky brown that was so typically French.
Spilling vivid colour into these monochromatic-toned rooms were romantic, lyrical paintings
