As she felt her body open up completely to receive him, Sylvie gripped him tightly, her eyes open wide, fixed intently on his as she begged him, ‘Now, Ran; let it be now...’
And as he responded to her, as she felt the hot liquid pulse of his release within her, her own cycle of rhythmic orgasmic contractions began again, only this time they were so much deeper and stronger; this time they weren’t for mere pleasure, she decided, half dazed with the intensity of what she was experiencing. This time they were harvesting the gift he had given her, the precious gift of life.
As his body subsided within hers, Ran still held her, stroking her hair, brushing his lips against her forehead, whilst she breathed in the hot, satisfied male scent of his skin.
‘It’s been a long time,’ she heard him saying unevenly as his heartbeat still thundered against her body.
‘Yes,’ she agreed quietly. There was no need for her to lie, to pretend; even if it was only temporarily, the barriers between them had been swept to one side by what she had experienced. Oddly she almost felt proud of the truth, of loving him so intensely that she had never been able to share herself with anyone else.
‘I’m not... Sex for sex’s sake just isn’t for me...’
There was a brief silence. She lifted her head and looked uncertainly at Ran. What was he thinking? Was he wishing she had been less open and honest, that she had pretended that what they had just shared meant nothing, that he meant nothing? But when she looked into his eyes they were too dark for her to be able to read his expression properly. All she could see was his faintly twisted smile before he touched her face gently and told her, ‘I meant that it had been as long a time for me, Sylvie...that I hadn’t...couldn’t... I was trying to explain...to excuse the fact that...that I wasn’t as controlled as I should have been.’
‘You were...you felt good to me,’ Sylvie told him simply and truthfully, compelled to add, ‘But then, I don’t have...you have...’
‘Been less thankfully in control on either of the occasions we’ve been like this...?’ Ran suggested ruefully. ‘You’re very kind, Sylvie, and...’ His body suddenly tensed and when he moved she could see in his eyes something that made her own stomach muscles lock in sensual expectation.
‘And I’m afraid I am likely to give you another demonstration of just how lacking in self-control you make me,’ he told her with a soft groan as he took hold of her hand and placed it on his body, commanding her huskily, ‘Feel.’
Instinctively Sylvie let her touch become a soft caress, her heart thudding as she felt him grow and harden still further beneath her fingertips.
‘Oh, God, Sylvie, Sylvie,’ she heard him protest, and he took hold of her, kissing her passionately as their bodies immediately and instinctively moved closer together.
* * *
It was fully daylight when Sylvie eventually woke up, her face flushing with hot colour as she opened her eyes to find Ran propped up on one elbow watching her.
‘How long have you been awake?’ she asked him, nervously clutching hold of the bedclothes, her colour deepening as she started to remember in full the events of the previous night.
‘Long enough to know that you snore,’ Ran told her ungallantly.
‘Snore? I do no such thing,’ Sylvie protested indignantly, letting go of the duvet in her ire.
‘No? Well, then, you growl...’ Ran teased her.
‘I do not growl! I don’t make any kind of noise at all,’ Sylvie protested.
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ Ran told her immediately, his manner completely changing, the amusement in his eyes replaced by a look of shockingly burning intensity as he leaned closer to her and half whispered against her mouth as his fingertips brushed the tip of her breast.
‘When I touch you here you make a little sound deep in your throat, and...’
‘No. No, I don’t want to listen to any of this,’ Sylvie cried out frantically as the full reality of her situation hit her.
Last night she and Ran had made love...last night she had ignored all the rules, all the laws of dignity and common sense and self-preservation which she had sworn she would adhere to, and...
And last night, lost in the fathomless deep waters of love and longing, she had prayed that she might conceive Ran’s child, had prayed for it and ached for it. A deep shudder racked through her. Logic told her that it was far too soon for her, for anyone, to know that she had done so, but somehow she did; somehow she sensed that already the seed that would be Ran’s child was growing there, implanted deep within her.
Immediately tears filled her eyes, tears of love for the child she knew would be her whole life, and tears also for the fact that he would never know the love of his father, for already she had decided that this child must be her child, her responsibility, that Ran must never know of its existence, that her child must not be a child whose father only acknowledged him out of duty, a child who knew that its mother was not and never had been loved by its father.