“Mariana.Oh God... dearGod...”He went still above her, hurled from his body and into the blackness, into that little death, lights exploding behind his eyes, his body racked with violent pleasure. He could still feel her hands digging into his shoulders. Holding him.
She kept her eyes closed.
He withdrew gently, lowered himself gingerly to lie beside her.
After a moment of silence, he whispered her name. As if he was already alone in the dark.
She said nothing.
They normally would have reached for each other, in celebration of magnificent sex and congratulations at their skill.
They lay still, side by side. Not touching.
He listened to her breathe. He could feel a hot, hollow space in his chest, as though his heart had been spaded out.
She shifted and laid an arm across her eyes, as though she couldn’t bear to see him.
There were layers to this shame. He’d used this explosive hunger between them, and her own sensual nature, as weapons. He’d meant to show her what she was denying herself if she were to leave him. To show her that for all her strength and determination, she would always surrender to him. Even when she was furious and hurt.
He was ashamed that he’d still reached for her for comfort, because hurting her had hurt him.
He was ashamed he’d somehow made her feel like a whore, like a mere receptacle for his needs, when she’d always come to him freely.
And he was ashamed that he, a man who had built an entire life on knowing what to do, had done the wrong thing, out of selfishness, because of all of the losses he’d known, somehow thisseemed to be the one he couldn’t bear. This was the one that would level him.
He was lost.
She exhaled finally, at length. And then she sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. She bent down to pluck up her stockings. She rolled each one on, carefully, slid her dress over her head. Slowly and gracefully.
She didn’t ask for his help with her laces. Deftly, she got them tied.
And once she was dressed, she quietly moved across the room, seized the candle, opened the door, and left, closing the door behind her.
She’d never looked back at him.
He lay motionless for a time. Flattened. Spent.
And suddenly he could feel a bleakness rolling toward him. A scouring emptiness in his chest.
As though he’d been swept off the jetty and hurled into the black depths.
And then there was nothing.
And nowhewas nothing.
He sat up and breathed into his hands, his shoulders heaving like bellows.
And from within that black nothingness rose wave after wave of love and fury and sorrow that he’d never dared allow expression. He did not know what to do with any of it. He could not bear it.
The man who could not be broken seized the vase and hurled it against the wall.
And saw it explode into smithereens.
Just like a temperamental opera singer.
Chapter Eighteen
There was no more crying.
