Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“Bugger wisdom,” he retorted, unfastening his trousers to give his viciously firm erection some breathing room and quickly sliding on the sheath he’d had the foresight to stow in his pocket earlier. Returning his hands to her rear end he gave her an affectionate squeeze, teasing with his thumbs. “Hmm. Speaking of buggery—”

“Not if we live a thousand years,” Charlotte snapped.

Dexter laughed and obediently returned to the methods of sensual torture that seemed most effective in driving Charlotte mad with desire. “When we return to the Dominions, perhaps we can reevaluate.”

She gasped at what he was doing with his fingers, but somehow Dexter knew it was his words and not his actions that prompted her to whisper, “Don’t.”

“Is it the idea of reevaluating that bothers you, or the notion that you might actually be alive long enough to worry about it?”

“We can’t talk about what happens when we return. I can’t.”

“I’m going to,” he said stubbornly. “For this one night. I don’t care if it’s unwise. I don’t care if it’s pretense on your part. It isn’t on mine.”

“Dexter . . .”

“You’re my wife, Charlotte,” he reminded her. “And tonight that’s all I want. To make love to my wife. And imagine what it will be like in another few weeks when I’m making love to her in my bed at home.”

She might have been crying. The shuddering breaths she took might have been caused by tears, not bliss, and Dexter knew it. But he sank into her anyway, no longer able to resist the temptation she presented. Her body welcomed him in with a shivering embrace, and if her groan ended on a sob he was too far gone to care. Or so he told himself.

He reached beneath her hips, hitching her closer, finding the place where his body slid into hers and using his fingers to give her the friction he knew she needed. She came in seconds, squeezing so tightly around him that he gasped. Struggling for strength, he rode her pleasure out but kept himself under control, not ready for it to be over.

When her trembling stopped at last, Charlotte pushed her head clear of the layers of skirt, but did not look back at him. He could see her fists clenched hard enough to whiten at the knuckles, peeking out from under the billows of silk and lace like meters of her tension.

“Your wife, you said,” she reminded him in a whisper. She turned her head a little, and he could see the sheen of tears still dampening her cheek. “I want that too. For tonight, I mean,” she said a bit too hastily, and Dexter felt a bolt of unreasonable hope shoot through him.

He leaned over her back, crushing her gown between them and pressing a kiss along her shoulder blade, feeling the movement of her muscles and bones through the silk.

“It doesn’t have to be just for tonight. It can be for as many nights as you like.”

“Not if I never come back.”

“No, Charlotte.”

“I never expected to, you know. Come back from this trip, I mean. I never planned for what I might do afterward, I was too busy getting to this point to think about that. Too many things can go wrong for me to hope for an afterward, anyway, and I’ve known that all along. If it happens, you rejoice, but you don’t put your trust in it. That’s part of the training. But I didn’t think I would mind it this much when I came to it.”

She was crying again and his heart broke a little. He felt responsible, as though by encouraging her to unburden herself to the point of tears the other day, he’d weakened Charlotte’s defenses to her own emotions. Although he knew it was no way to help, he did the first thing available to him to try to take her mind off her pain; he moved again, easing into a rhythm, forging a connection the only way she seemed willing to allow.

Foolish , his mind insisted, selfish . But his body was so much more convincing. Sweet , it told him. Mine, mine . Soon all the words disappeared, melting into pleasure that mounted too rapidly to contain. When Dexter felt Charlotte tighten around him again, heard a cry that could not be mistaken for anything but pleasure, he pushed into her until he couldn’t anymore and emptied himself like he was spilling out his very soul.

NANCY AND PARIS, FRANCE

“DON’T SLIP!”

Dexter would have rather found a private spot on level ground for launching the Gossamer Wing on its maiden night voyage, but the schedule simply didn’t permit scouting for such a location. Once they’d recovered from their bout of amorous insanity, Charlotte had barely had time to change into more suitable clothing for her mission before it was full dark.

“Don’t fall through the roof,” Charlotte retorted in a whisper.

“Witty, my sweet meringue. Are you sure you remembered your canteen?”

“It’s right here.”

“Boot knife?”

“In my boot.”

“Loaded pistol?”

“I have it, but I won’t use it. I can’t wear it on my thigh in the harness, and I’d never reach it in time in the shoulder holster with my jacket fastened.”

Charlotte already had the larger, lighter of the two cases braced between the roof and a chimney. The back side of the building was dark, and Dexter’s eyes were still adjusting. He wished he had looked longer at her in the light, back in the room.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked politely, wrestling the second case open and tugging out the rigging. Like the silk balloon, it had not been dyed black, but a very dark gray-blue judged by Murcheson’s experts to be the best color for camouflage against the night sky. The color was certainly difficult to see here, on the darkened slate roof of the hotel. So was Charlotte, in her black jacket, breeches and boots—no decorative spats this time—with her bright hair tucked under her helmet, and smudged kohl masking the rest of her fair skin.

“Just hold that there,” Charlotte replied, “I’ll do the rest.”

She was focused, brisk, accomplishing the setup of the Gossamer Wing far too quickly and efficiently for Dexter’s taste.

“Take this. I made it for you. It weighs just under half a pound.” He slipped a small, flat, black box from one of his coat pockets, and strapped it to the underside of the harness where it wouldn’t interfere with Charlotte’s movements. “It’s a portable telegraphic transmitter. I have the receiver set up in the hotel room. I thought if you wanted to send a message once you were safely at Murcheson’s factory . . .”

“So tiny.” She ran her fingers over the smooth, painted metal box, but didn’t take the time to open it.

“It had to be. You have your maps?” he inquired.

“You’re worse than my father.” She slapped at a pocket, and Dexter heard the soft crinkle of paper under her hand. “I have the maps. I have them memorized, though, so if all goes according to plan I shouldn’t need them.”

“Does anything ever go according to plan?” He handed her the harness, and she shook it out across the roof as quietly as she could, trying to keep the buckles from clinking as she let it down.

“There’s a first time for everything. That’s it, then, I suppose. I can climb in while it’s down flat like this if you’ll hold the tether and the rigging. That way I won’t have to risk jumping into it from this angle in the dark.”

Dexter nodded, numbness beginning to creep through him. He knew this was the reason for her presence in France. He’d known that from the very start. But now, faced with the reality of her disappearing into the night, he finally allowed himself to acknowledge the danger. She was going after the hidden weapon plans, even knowing that the same man who had killed her husband over them might be waiting for her. If their trip to Nancy hadn’t thrown Coeur de Fer off as they’d hoped, this might well be the last time Dexter saw Charlotte. Charlotte herself seemed to take that unthinkable outcome as a given. Except for those few brief, unguarded moments earlier, she always carried her fatalism like a shield. For the first time he comprehended why she might need to do so, why it was easier that way.