Never Leave Me by Margaret Pemberton

surer way?
    There was a firm rap on her door and she flew round to face it, her eyes wide, half-expecting to meet the news that Valmy was on fire.
    â€˜What are you doing out of bed?’ he asked peremptorily, his dark, rich voice smoking across her senses. ‘Auge told you not to walk on it yet.’
    â€˜I needed to walk on it,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I was getting so stiff I could hardly move.’
    His presence seemed to fill the room. He was in uniform, his cap and gloves held correctly in the crook of his arm, the decoration for valour that Hitler had placed around his neck gleaming dully in the late afternoon sunlight. He closed the door behind him, placed his cap and gloves on a chair, and walked towards her.
    â€˜I tried to visit you earlier, but your mother was insistent that you needed rest.’
    She tried to speak and could not. He was going to touch her and her mental capitulation would become physical reality. The blood drummed in her ears and she pressed herself backwards against the chill coldness of the window pane.
    He stood mere inches away from her and then slowly reached out, tilting her face to his, tracing the pure outline of her cheek-bone and jaw with his forefinger. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, drawing her towards him, his voice thickening. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Lisette. Not now. Not ever.’
    A shudder ran through her and she gave a low, soft moan as his arms closed around her and his mouth came down on hers in swift, unfumbled contact. For one brief, vain moment she tried to resist and to pull away but he held her easily and as his lips burned hers, hard and sweet, her body moulded itself to his of its own volition. Her hands moved up and around his neck, her lips parting as she lost her breath in the passion of his mouth.
    Nothing mattered any more. Not the uniform that he wore; not the language that he spoke. Not even Valmy. All that mattered was that she knew, with an instinct ages old, that she had found the other half of her being. The one person without whom she would never again feel whole.
    â€˜I love you,’ she whispered helplessly as his hot, urgent mouth moved to her throat and her shoulders and he slipped the strap of her nightdress free, his fingers caressing the soft warm flesh of her breast.
    The silk fall of her hair brushed his hand and tenderness, terrible in its intensity, trembled within him. He wanted to plunder her body, to assuage his deep, driving need of her with ferocious love-making, yet when he lifted her in his arms and turned with her towards the bed, it was with passion tightly reined.
    She was still pale from the blood she had lost. It would be days before her stitches were removed. Days before he could make love to her without inflicting pain. With a gentleness he had never before experienced, he laid her down on the bed, stunned by the knowledge that he would wait – and wait willingly.
    He took hold of her hands, drawing her fingertips up and pressing them against his lips. All of his adult life he had had as many women as he had chosen to reach out for. Sophisticated, clever, beautiful women that he had taken and discarded with practised ease. Not one of them had possessed her vibrancy, her allure. Just looking at her sent his pulse pounding and his heart racing.
    A smile crooked the corner of his mouth. His family would be outraged. His friends would think he had taken leave of his senses. A Frenchwoman. He could almost hear their remarks; see their disbelief. His shoulders lifted in an imperceptible shrug. He was not a man who cared what others thought of him. He was thirty-two, a hardened man of the world who knew what he wanted. And what he wanted was Lisette de Valmy.
    â€˜It won’t be easy for you,’ he said, reaching out and sliding the strap of her nightdress chastely up and on to her shoulder, fighting the urge to cup the perfect weight of her breast in his palm, knowing that if