He worshipped her with his mouth for wanting him. He pleasured her for the delirious joy of doing so, until her hands fisted in his hair and she cried out his name, and he felt the tremors shake her.
Then, finally, he sheathed himself in her hotly welcoming softness, and joined her.
Then the world shook for him as well, and if it had ended in that instant, he would have gone to damnation happily, because she clung to him and kissed him as though there were no tomorrow and she would hold and want him forever.
And when the world exploded, and he spilled himself into her, it was as though his soul spilled, too, and he would have given up that soul gladly, if that were the price for the moment of pure happiness she gave him.
The next day, Jessica gave him the icon.
Dain found it at his place when he came into the breakfast room. It stood between his coffee cup and the plate. Even in the weak light of an overcast morning, pearls shimmered, topaz and rubies sparkled, diamonds shot rainbow sparks. Beneath the glimmering golden halo, the grey-eyed Madonna smiled wistfully upon the scowling infant in her arms.
A small, folded piece of notepaper was tucked under the bottom of the jeweled frame. His heart racing, Dain took it out and opened it.
“Happy Birthday,” it read. That was all.
He looked up from the note to his wife, who sat opposite, her sleek hair framed by the hazy light from the window.
She was buttering a piece of scone, oblivious, as usual, to the cataclysm she’d just set off.
“Jess.” He could scarcely force the one syllable past his tight throat.
“Yes?” She set down the knife and spooned a lump of preserves onto the scone.
He thumbed frantically through his mental dictionary, looking for words, but he couldn’t find what he wanted because he didn’t know what he was looking for.
“Jess.”
The bit of scone paused halfway to her lips. She looked at him.
Dain pointed at the icon.
She looked at that. “Oh. Well, better late than never, I thought. And yes, I know it isn’t truly a gift because it belongs to you anyway. Everything of mine—or nearly everything—became yours legally when we wed. But we shall have to pretend, because I hadn’t time to think of, let alone find, a suitable birthday present.” She popped the buttered and lavishly sweetened tidbit into her mouth…as though everything had been thoroughly explained and settled and not a single fragment of the sky had fallen.
For the first time, Dain had an inkling of what it must feel like to be Bertie Trent, owning the necessary human quantity of grey matter, but possessing no notion how to make it function. Perhaps, Dain thought, Trent hadn’t been born that way after all. Perhaps he had simply been incapacitated by a lifetime of explosions.
Perhaps the termfemme fataleought to be taken more literally. Perhaps it was the brain she was fatal to.
Not my brain, Dain resolved.She is not going to turn me into a blithering imbecile.
He could handle this. He could sort it out. He was merely taken aback, that was all. The last birthday present he’d received had come from his mother, when he was eight. The tart Wardell and Mallory had supplied on Birthday Thirteen didn’t count, because Dain had wound up having to pay for her.
He was surprised, no more. Greatly surprised, admittedly, because he’d truly believed Jessica would sooner throw the icon into a cauldron of boiling acid than let him have it. He hadn’t even asked about it during the marriage negotiations, because he’d assumed she’d sold it long since, and he’d adamantly refused to let himself imagine or hope, even for one half second, that she hadn’t.
“This is a…delightful surprise,” he said, as any intelligent adult would say in the circumstances. “Grazie. Thank you.”
She smiled. “I knew you would understand.”
“I cannot possibly understand all the implications and symbolic significance,” he said very, very calmly. “But then, I am a male, and my brain is too primitive for such complicated calculations. I can see, however—as I did as soon as the filth had been removed—that it is an exquisite work of art, and I doubt I shall ever grow tired of looking at it.”
That was gracious, he thought. Adult. Intelligent. Reasonable. He had only to keep his hand upon the table and it would not tremble.
“I hoped you would feel so,” she said. “I was sure you’d recognized how remarkable and rare it was. That’s because it’s more evocative, do you not agree, than the usual run of Stroganovs, fine as they are.”
“Evocative.” He gazed at the richly painted figures. Even now, though it was his, he was uneasy, unwilling to lose himself in it or examine the feelings it evoked.
She rose and came to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“When I first saw it, after it had been repaired and cleaned, I was much affected,” she said. “The sensations were very odd. Apparently, at this level of artistry, I am out of my depth. You are the connoisseur. I am merely a species of magpie, and I am not always certain why my eye is drawn to certain objects, even when I have no doubt of their value.”
