Sleeping Beauty (88 page)

“I don't know what you want to do tomorrow,” she said.

“Sail further up the Nile,” he responded promptly. “And after we get to Aswan, I'd like to turn around and sail back to the Mediterranean and keep going. How about it? Shall we sail for three or four months and forget the rest of the world? We have books and music and food, people to wait on us, and so much still to discover about each other. A few months is only a start, but it would be a good one. Is it all right with you?”

“I'd love it,” Anne said easily.

“Good. I'll call the university tomorrow, and the museum, and tell them to hold everything until May or June.”

“And I'll call my secretary. She'll take care of everything. We'll have to call Gail and Leo, too; they'll be wondering.”

There was a pause. “You're calling my bluff,” Josh said a little accusingly.

“Was it a bluff?” Anne's eyes were wide and innocent.

He burst out laughing. “Half wish, half bluff, and you know it. You're going to be tough to live with. We'll do it, though, someday—maybe we'll do it right and sail around the world—when we get our lives organized. Anne, I said earlier I want us to get married. Have you thought about that?”

“I want it, too. But I haven't lived with anyone for a long time, Josh; I might be very hard to get along with.”

“I'm not worried about it. We'll have a wonderful time getting used to each other. Where shall we live?”

“I'd like to find a new place that we can make together.”

“Yes, but if we don't find one right away, then what?”

“We'll live in yours; I don't want to go back to mine.”

“No, you don't belong there anymore.” He brushed her hair back from her face. Her skin was flushed, her eyes were shining; her beauty had a depth and softness he had not seen before. Her body was like ivory silk against the white sheet, with small shadowed curves and hollows that rose and fell as she breathed. “You need bright colors,” he said, “and the most lavish, sensual fabrics we can find. I want to wrap you in velvet and silk and cashmere and angora, everything soft and rich that will make you feel luxurious, all the luxury of feeling you kept buried for so long; I want you to
feel—”

“Yes.” It was a cry of gladness. Anne kissed him. She stretched her body against his; she wanted to melt into him. She pressed her hands along his back and down his thighs, pulling him more tightly to her even though they could not be any tighter than they were. She stretched one leg over his hips, clasping him, and moved against him. Her lips had opened to an O of surprise. She wanted—
again, again, always
—and the desire that surged through her body as it
pressed against Josh's was so overwhelming it made her dizzy. “I didn't know,” she murmured again. There was so much she had never known.

Josh kissed the long line of her neck as her head fell back; his lips lingered along her breasts, the firm skin of her stomach and the soft hollows where it met her thighs. Anne listened to her rapid breathing in the quiet room; she looked down, at her fingers deep in Josh's hair, and when she felt his tongue, quick and slow, probing and sure, waves of pleasure washed over her. She felt she was drowning in heat as enveloping as that in the desert, and the room spun around her like a whirlwind. She fought it, trying to steady it, but then she let herself sink into it and kept her eyes open, watching Josh. He seemed to waver, and she knew that once again there were tears in her eyes. “Josh,” she said, but it was only a breath, and then she felt herself come together and burst beneath the insistent touch of his tongue, and she cried out and a tear fell on her pillow.

He lay beside her again, and cradled her, kissing her wet eyes. Anne's breathing slowed; her body quieted. “Why were you crying?” he asked.

“Because it was so beautiful.” She looked at Josh. “It's a terrible thing when something beautiful is fouled. And even though I knew what had been done to me, I never knew that that was happening, too: that something beautiful and good was being fouled.”

“And now you've found it, as it ought to be,” he said.

“We found it. I had to have you with me.” She gazed about the room through half-closed eyes. Suddenly a chill touched her, and she sat up.
A flowered bedroom that was their whole world; they sat in it and lay in it and talked in it. It was just like a married couple's house, only smaller.
“Josh, I want to go outside, to the deck.”

“A good idea.” He cast a swift glance at her troubled face.

“It does get stuffy in here. Hold on; I'll get our robes.” He took a white terry-cloth robe from the closet and pulled it on, and went to the other stateroom to bring one for Anne. He held it for her and she slipped her arms into it and tied it around her. With those simple actions, the flowered bedroom
faded from her memory. And as she turned with Josh to walk back through the lounge, Anne knew, somehow, that it would not come back.

In a sheltered corner of the deck, Josh spread large green and flowered cushions and they lay back on them, looking up at the hazy stars. “Much better,” Josh murmured. He held Anne to him and pointed at a wide-flung group of stars with a row of three stars in the center. “Orion,” he said. “The three stars are his belt. When I was a kid, I made up stories about him, that he ruled the sky and watched over the earth and reached out to whoever needed help on any of the planets. Sort of a father and school principal and god all rolled into one. We got to be good friends. Every kid needs somebody like that, more visible than God, more accessible than the school principal, and so far away you can confide all your fears, and dump all your anger, and know they won't come back to haunt you.”

“I had a friend named Amy,” Anne said, this time remembering the name. “I invented her when I was about eight or nine, and she was with me until Vince came. Then she disappeared. Maybe if she'd been up there, in the sky, I could have kept her with me. But when she went, there wasn't anyone else. Josh, you said you wanted children.”

“Yes. I've wanted them for a long time, off and on. It always worried me, though—it's such a presumptuous thing to do, to create human beings and decide how they ought to be formed—and I couldn't find anyone I wanted with me in tackling it, so I always said I traveled too much to be a good father. I don't feel that way now. I'd risk being presumptuous as long as I'm with you.”

“I may be too old,” Anne said.

“Then we'd better get started right away.”

She sat up, looking at him gravely. “I'm almost forty, Josh.”

“And I'm forty-two.” He crossed his arms behind his head and smiled up at her. “You think we'll be doddering and nodding off when they want to stay up late and talk about life? Or our memory will be so bad we won't be able to give them a full briefing on sex when the time comes?”

“That's probably the last thing people forget,” Anne said with a smile. “And it wouldn't be fair if I forget it; I got to it so late I don't have enough years as it is.”

“You won't forget and you're not too old,” Josh said quietly.

“And maybe I can't have children. Maybe I've been closed up for too long. I know that's not scientific, but it's a worry I have.”

“Then we won't have any. We'll have each other and a life together; we don't need children to make us feel complete.” He gazed at her. “Would you feel bereft if we didn't have them?”

“Yes,” Anne said simply. “It hurts, sometimes, when I'm with Robin and Ned, and I think about what it would be like to have my own children and give them a real childhood. There's so much I want to give . . . but it was fantasy; I didn't let myself really think about it. Until now.”

“We'll both think about it,” Josh said. “And we'll do our damndest to make it happen. But however it turns out, my love, we'll be fine. It doesn't matter whether we have half a dozen kids or spend four months on a boat or live in one apartment or another. The wonder is that we found each other.”

“And that you woke me up.”

“You woke yourself,” Josh said. “I helped, but it came from within you. You must know that.”

“Yes, but I couldn't have done it alone, or with anyone else.”

Josh reached toward her and she took his hand. She kissed his palm, and then his fingers, one by one. “I never knew it would be so simple,” she said. “To do, and be, and feel so much. And that it would feel right. And good.”

She looked down at his lean body stretched out beside her. One arm was still beneath his head; he was smiling at her. Anne felt the shock of desire burst within her once again. It was becoming familiar now and she embraced it, stretching like a cat in sunlight as it spread through her. Her skin was so sensitive the breeze seemed to leave small traces along it; she heard clearly each tiny slap of the waves below
them; she saw with brilliant clarity the pale outline of the boat and the pillows nestled beneath them. How wonderful that everything was so clear, and that she was part of all of it.

“Greedy,” she murmured, bending over Josh with a smile. “I never knew I was so greedy.”

He slipped his hand inside her robe, holding her breast, caressing her breast. “I love that in you.”

She untied Josh's robe and opened it, and bent over him as she had earlier. But now there was no cold precision in her movements, no shadow from another time. There was only her desire. And her love. And Josh. She curved above him, moving slowly, dreamlike, feeling her way, letting it be as new as the touch of her fingers on his skin.

She kissed the dark hairs on his chest. His heart pounded beneath her lips and he moved restlessly as she slid the tip of her tongue along his smooth, hard skin. “Dearest Anne.” The words stretched out, long and low.

Her hands held his hips, her breasts brushed his thighs, and smoothly, easily, she took him into her mouth. She filled herself with him, with the solid living warmth of him; she pulled him deep into herself and lost herself in the feelings that swept her and lifted her and opened her to everything they would discover together.
I never knew it would be so simple. And it would feel right.
There were no more closed doors, no more frozen days. She was free, and alive, and awake. A laugh of pure joy trembled in her throat.

Josh lifted her up and pulled her astride him, spreading open her robe. Anne bent low to kiss him. There was a wildness in them they had not known earlier, a passion and urgency that drove them. Josh's fingers dug into Anne, fiercely pulling her onto him, and Anne took the skin of his neck between her teeth as if she could not find enough ways to make him part of her. They looked down, just able to make out in the shadows his shaft disappearing into her, then emerging, glistening in the faint light only to plunge into her again, faster and more fevered, until they cried out together. Slowly, as if coming down from a mountain they had scaled together, they relaxed, and stretched, and at last were still. They lay without speaking for a long time. Anne
was stretched full length on Josh, her legs covering his, her lips resting against a slow pulse in his neck. Her body grew cool, and her blood coursed more slowly but still with the richness that filled her, all of her, for the first time.
I want to wrap you in velvet and silk . . . all the luxury of feeling you kept buried for so long. . . .

“I feel so luxurious,” she said with a long sigh. “Like coming home on a bitter night into a room with a fire, and a long, soft robe, and something hot to drink, and knowing it was waiting for me and that's where I belong.”

She slid from his body to lie on the tumbled cushions beside him, curled within his arm, her hand on his chest. She closed her eyes, wrapped in a deep darkness that held them both as if in a sheltered nook. Then she heard voices, and sprang up.

“They're raising the anchor,” Josh said. He sat beside her and closed her robe and tied it, then tied his own.

“Oh, Josh, the sky,” Anne said in wonder. It was pale gray, with bands of rose and peach and violet that changed before them to orange and then the white-gold of the desert sun. The Nile shimmered in wavy glints reflected in the windows of the lounge, sending lights dancing across their white robes. From the town, the call of the
muzzein
rang out, high-pitched, like a creature of the night that had just awakened and was gazing in delight at the world at sunrise.

“So much beauty,” Anne said softly. “So many ways to be alive.” She stood at the rail, watching the people beginning their day amid the small stucco buildings and dusty streets of the town. “Josh, I'm not at all sleepy; can we go ashore somewhere today and do some exploring?”

He laughed, standing with her, his arm around her. “Anywhere you want. For this little time, there's nothing to stop us from anything we want to do. We'll deal with the rest of the world next week.”

Anne put her arm around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. In bare feet and white robes, beneath the blue and gold sky, they watched the shore as the
Hapy
glided to the deeper waters of the Nile and exuberantly picked up speed. A breeze came up. On both sides of the
river, tall banana plants with huge glossy leaves lined the shore; behind them, farmers were arriving to till their terraced fields, lush and fertile, holding back the barren, hostile desert. The boat sailed smoothly and steadily between those long fields that were a celebration of life. Josh and Anne held each other. He smiled at the light in her eyes. “Good morning, my love,” he said.

Books by Judith Michael

Deceptions

Possessions

Private Affairs

Inheritance

A Ruling Passion

Sleeping Beauty

Pot of Gold

Published by POCKET BOOKS