The Wolf's Hour Read Online Free PDF Page A

thighs, and then his tongue was there, too, and she gripped his hair and moaned as her hips undulated to meet him.
    He paused, holding her back from the edge, and began again, the tongue and the rose, working in counterpoint like fingers on a fine golden instrument. Margritta made music, whispering and moaning as the warm waves built inside her and crashed through her senses.
    And then there it was, the white-hot explosion that lifted her off the bed and made her cry out his name. She settled back like an autumn leaf, full of color and wilted at the edges.
    He entered her, heat against heat, and she clung to his back and held on like a rider in the storm; his hips moved with deliberation, not frantic lust, and just as she thought she could accept no more of him, her body opened and she sought to take him into the place where they would be one creature with two names and pounding hearts, and then even the hard spheres of his manhood would enter her, too, instead of being simply pressed against the moistness. She wanted all of him, every inch, and all the liquid he could give her. But even in the midst of the maelstrom she sensed him holding himself apart, as if there were something in himself that even he could not get to. In their cell of passion she thought she heard him growl, but the noise was muffled against her throat and she could not be sure it wasn’t her own voice.
    The bed’s joints spoke. It had spoken for many men, but never so eloquently.
    And then his body convulsed-once, twice, a third time. Five times. He shivered, his fingers twisting the tangled sheet. She locked her legs around his back, urging him to stay. Her lips found his mouth, and she tasted the salt of his effort.
    They rested awhile, talking again, but this time in whispered voices, and the subject was not London or the war but the art of passion. And then she took the rose from where it lay on the bedside table, and she followed the trail down to his restirring hardness. It was a beautiful machine, and she lavished it with love.
    Rose petals lay on the sheets. The candle had burned low. Michael Gallatin lay on his back, sleeping, with Margritta’s head on his shoulder. He breathed with a faint, husky rumbling noise, like a well-kept engine.
    Still later, she awakened and kissed him on the lips. He was sleeping soundly, and did not respond. Her body was a pleasant ache; she felt stretched, re-formed into his shape. She looked at his face for a moment, assigning the craggy features to memory. It was too late for her to feel real love, she thought. There had been too many bodies, too many ships passing in the night; she knew she was useful to the service as a refuge and liaison for agents who needed sanctuary, and that was all. Of course she decided who she would sleep with, and when, but there had been many. The faces blended together-but his stayed apart. He was not like the others. And not like any man she’d ever known. So call it schoolgirl infatuation and leave it at that, she thought. He had his destination, and she had her own, and they were not likely to be the same port.
    She got out of bed, carefully so as not to awaken him, and went naked into the large walk-through closet that separated her bedroom from the dressing room. She switched on the light, chose a white silk gown, shrugged into it, then took a brown terrycloth robe-a man’s robe-off a hanger and draped it around a female-shaped dress dummy in the bedroom. A thought: perhaps a spray of perfume between her breasts and a brush of her hair before true sleep. The car might be coming at seven in the morning, but she recalled that he liked to be up by five-thirty.
    Margritta walked, the well-used rose in hand, into the dressing room. A small Tiffany lamp still burned on the table. She sniffed the rose, smelled their mingled scents, and put it into a vase. That one would have to be pressed between silk. She drew a contented breath, then picked up her brush and looked into the