Bitter Oath (New Atlantis)(20)

‘Rene?’ Liv’s voice was thready and high, her emotions as out of control as his own.

‘If I do not stop now, I will not be able to stop at all. Trust me, Liv, I am doing the gentlemanly thing here, no matter how much it pains me.’ He didn’t try to look at her. One glance at her glorious hair in disarray, and her gown half off her lush form, and he would have been lost. Closing his eyes, he tried to think of something else, anything else, but the need that was coursing through his sensitised body.

‘This… this passion between us seems unnaturally intense.’ Her voice was wavering and fragile, as if she were close to tears. ‘Augusta never described it thus. It feels wrong… but I do not want to stop.’

He groaned, and buried his face in his hands to block out the images her words brought to mind. He didn’t want to stop either. But he had to, for her sake. It was too soon. She still saw such sexual feelings as wrong, outside of marriage. When she calmed down, she would feel betrayed by him. A stranger in a strange world, she needed his support, his protection, not his animal need.

‘It feels more intense to me too. But there is nothing wrong with what we are feeling. It is natural – I assure you. But you are a maiden in my care, and I would not abuse that responsibility.’ His voice was as strange to his ear as hers.

‘My… my maiden state is yours, if you would have it. I will never marry another, so you take nothing from another man. But I fear what my father would say if I returned home … with child.’

Her innocent offer was as painful as broken glass underfoot. He rubbed at his spikey hair with his palms, trying to rub the sense back into his head.

‘You would not find yourself in such a condition, I promise you. I can never father children. No one here can. That is why we Retrieve people from other times. It is the only way we can continue our species.’

Liv shifted into a sitting position, and pulled her gown back up to cover her exposed skin. Then she brushed her hair back from her face. All this he saw out of the periphery of his vision.

‘Oh Rene, how heart-breaking for you all. I have never wanted to be a mother. Childbirth killed my mama and eldest sister before I was ten years old. I have watched childbearing make an old woman out of my eldest living sister. But not to have that choice… how do you all stand it?’

‘For hundreds of years we just focused on bringing our world back from the brink. There was much to be done, and so few of us left to do it. Then, only a few years ago, Cara and Jac, the blonde couple you met earlier today, began a revolutionary project. They rescue children from the past, and our people parent them, and give them loving homes. It is resurrecting us. It is giving us hope. And my work gives hope of a different kind.’

‘What is your work?’ she asked softly, leaning in against him, so he could feel the warmth of her body as it pressed against his own.

‘Our ancestors, with their overpopulation and industry, destroyed the natural balance. Millions of species on this planet…in this world … were killed. Became extinct. Here in New Atlantis everything looks perfect, but elsewhere – there is devastation. We have disrupted the weather, warmed the earth to uninhabitable levels, and melted the icecaps. The evil that we have done in ignorance, greed and neglect is boundless.

‘But now we are starting to redress the harm we have done. We have set up a program in the last year to start to Retrieve the extinct flora and fauna, so that it can have a second chance. The giant earthworm I found, with your grandfather’s help, will assist us to regenerate the barren soil. We will recreate the biodiversity we have lost. We will create Eden on earth once again.’

‘That is a God-given mission. I wish I could play a part in it…’ Liv whispered into the silence.

With renewed pain, he felt the tears sting his eyelids. He would give anything for her to be able to be given the opportunity to play a part, at his side. But fate had other plans for her.

Now that he had tasted the wonder of her, would he be able to go on, once she was gone? It was one thing to exist without love, when you have never known what you were missing. It was something else entirely, to go back to that half-life after having known such bliss.

If this was his God-given mission, didn’t he deserve a God-given helpmate? Someone to share the burden and the dream. Yet again he condemned the unfairness of life.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





Liv awoke the following morning to feel the sun on her face. It was such an unusual experience, that for several minutes, she just lay there and drank in the sensation. But the longer she focused on the warmth on her skin and the light behind her closed lids, the more clearly she remembered sensations of a different kind that began to filter into her consciousness.

If she had known the potency of passion like she experienced last night, she would not have been so fast to reject marriage in favour of the freedom of spinster life. To look forward every night to those overwhelming feelings, to experience that pleasure, which was unlike anything she had ever known before, it would be worth the risks of childbirth, and the limits marriage imposed.

As long as her husband could be Rene. It was impossible to imagine herself reacting, as she had last night, to any other man. It was his touch that was the catalyst for that intense experience. And just as the kisses of other men had been nothing compared to those of the French Indian, so the touch on her most private parts would have been nothing from another man.

Oh, the wicked pleasure his mouth had wrought, as it fastened on her breast. She had felt the delicious heat of it right down to the junction between her legs. No wonder she had become weak and helpless under the onslaught of that mouth.

She would have let him do anything to her in those heated moments. And, even now, she regretted his honourable side that had stopped the progress from going into ever more forbidden areas. Who was this woman who could happily throw away all modesty and socially accepted behaviour? It was as if she had become a different person since she stepped through that shower of sparkling lights.

Stretching languidly, she became aware of the silky texture of the sleeping tunic she wore. It was nothing like the loose fitting cotton night dress that covered her from neck to toe she wore at home. This garment plunged at the neck and the length only covered her thighs. Last night, while her body still burned from unmet desire, she had stood in the bathroom, in front of the mirrors, and looked at herself in the revealing garment. She had touched herself, too, imaging her hands were Rene’s, and the delight she felt would be her guilty secret.

What would it feel like to have his hands roaming over her body, the only separation between their skin being the silky thin fabric of the tunic? Would his hands shake as they did last night? Would they move, as if greedy to touch every part of her? Would her heartbeat thunder so loudly in her ears that it drowned out all other sounds?

How could a man smell so good? Men of her own time, who bathed rarely, always smelled dank, like mouldy cloth left too long undried. And they would cover their odour with heavy fragrances that were cloying to the senses. Rene smelled nothing like that. His had a clean smell, like washing fresh off the line. It reminded her of sunshine and something distinctly male – exotic and mysterious, like spices from the orient.

Liv turned her head to sniff at her own skin. It smelled a little dank. It was not as clean and sweet smelling as Rene’s. And her hair needed washing. Usually that task was an onerous one, and she put it off as long as possible.

But what would it feel like to wash her body in the ‘shower’? To stand naked under the pouring water, allowing it to wash her clean. She felt the slow burn of embarrassment spread up her neck and into her cheeks. This was not home. This was a different place entirely. Here, there was freedom like she had never known. Here, she could be whoever she wanted to be, do whatever she wanted to do, with no repercussions.

Who but she would know that she had stood naked in a box made of clear glass and let warm water soak her entirely? Who but she would know that she had rubbed the hyacinth smelling liquid over her hair and body and then rinsed it away? No one.

She threw back the sheet, and stepped down from the huge, comfortable bed, feeling anew the silky give of the rug beneath her bare feet. Everything about this world was a sensual delight. It was a hedonist’s paradise.

With a self-conscious giggle, she let the tunic drop from her body, removed the clinging ‘shorts’, and raced for the bathroom, naked as the day she was born. Feeling delightfully wicked; she caught a scandalous glimpse of her body as she traversed the tiles and entered the cubicle. Then, she pressed the button for the waterfall, and was instantly inundated with the heavy weight of gallons of falling water. Gasping, she moved back out of the flow so she could breathe. Too late, she realised she hadn’t closed the shower door, and there was now water pooling all over the tiles.

She reached out to close the door, then pressed the ‘button’ for the sweet smelling liquid. She rubbed the cream over her skin, watching in delight as it bubbled up like an expensive bar of soap. More confident now, she trickled more of the liquid into her hair, and began to rub it into her long locks. It stung her eyes not at all.