“I misspoke,” Mia says. “I meant me. I would cry. I don’t want anything else for now but you inside me. Come. It’s all I want.”
When his weight presses her into the bed, belly to belly, chest to breast, she does cry. She turns her head, maybe hoping he won’t see it. He is careful at first and slow. She moans as if she is being hurt. He holds himself up with his arms, with his knees. Her body is bruised at the ribs, she has cuts on her stomach and neck and legs. She is a bright angel with black wounds. She sears his eyes.
“On this earth, under all the stars in the sky,” he whispers, “there is a country, and in this country, a mighty unbreakable city, and in this city a mighty unbreakable girl, and in the girl a soul, and in the soul a heart.”
“That’s yours. Have you come to take it?” she murmurs and curves into him. “Go ahead, then. Let nothing stop you.” She pulls on his arms, pleads with him to forget her pain, to lower himself on her, to flatten her, to hold himself up only a little bit, and to not stop moving.
Eventually the moving is going to cause me to stop moving, Julian says. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. She moans in dissent, in assent, in delirium. Her eyes are closed, but toward the end, she opens them, puts her hands on his chest, and asks him to wait, wait.
Julian almost can’t wait.
Wait, wait. Crawling out from underneath him, she hops off the bed, pulls off the quilt and throws it on the floor.
What are you doing?
I’m shameful, I know, she says, lying down in front of the full-length wardrobe mirror and beckoning him to her. But just once, I want to feel it and see it. I want to see what it looks like to be loved by you.
He is happy to oblige. He holds up her legs, one palm on the back of her raised thigh. He wants to give her what she wants. Trouble is, he’s almost done.
A little longer, Jules. Please. A little longer. Pressing his face to her face, he kisses her perspiring cheek and watches her stare into the mirror—at his body pulsing over hers, a piston in motion. He watches her watch him through the mirror, watching her as he comes.
* * *
“I don’t want to leave here,” she says, nestled into him. “I’m not hungry for food. I’m not thirsty for coffee. I just want you. How long until the next round?”
“Five minutes,” he replies. “But I’ve got fourteen more rounds in me, and yet they’re out there, waiting for us.”
“After fifteen rounds,” Mia says in an electrified whisper, raising her eyes, “I might not walk out of the ring on my own two feet.”
“Oh, for sure you won’t,” he says, kissing her upturned face.
“Come on, just once more?” she says.
“The next time will go on too long,” he says, and in response to her moan adds, “Shh. I promise you’ll have it. We have the room for the weekend. We’ll have plenty of time, for everything.”
“For everything?”
“Anything you want.”
Reluctantly she gets out of bed and looks for her robe. “I’m warning you, though, no Wild tonight, no Duncan, no Liz. No one. Just me and you.”
“You don’t have to tell me about it.”
Before they leave the room, she embraces him. “Out there, you’re going to be all proper with me, as always, but I want you to know how I feel.”
“I know how you feel.” Julian strokes her face.
“But how do you feel?” she asks in a trembling, uncertain whisper.
“You don’t know how I feel, Mia?” Almost everything he feels, he puts into his eyes. “I am yours. I belong to you.”
What he tries to conceal:
And at the bar, a tune is playing, a plaintive male voice complaining: his girl has found another boy another love, while the twirling ballerina round and round and round keeps spinning and then she stops, the Cheapside girl in silk and gold receding.
19
A House on Grimsby Street
IN THE SUITE, THE REST ARE ALMOST DONE EATING. THE curtains are open, and the winter Thames flows below their windows. There may not be much traffic over the bridges, but Julian has never seen the river so jammed with boats and ships. It’s become the primary mode of delivery in and