Never Leave Me by Margaret Pemberton Page A

he did so all restraint would be lost.
    There was ownership in his fingers and a shiver ran down her spine. ‘What won’t be easy?’ she asked, noticing for the first time the small scar that ran through his left eyebrow, the tiny lines at the corner of his eyes and mouth.
    â€˜Marrying a German.’
    She gazed up at him, her mouth rounding on a gasp of incredulity. ‘Marrying?’
    His eyes gleamed. ‘Of course. What other alternative is there?’
    They were legion and they both knew it. German officers did not many French girls. They took them as spoils of war. Sometimes they seduced them. Sometimes they even loved them. But they did not marry them.
    â€˜But how … where?’
    He hooked a finger under her chin, lowering his head, kissing her long and deeply. ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he said at last. ‘Leave it all to me.’
    She grasped hold of his hand. ‘No!’ she cried in sudden fear. ‘My parents… The villagers …’
    His smile faded. ‘There’s no need for you to concern yourself about retribution from the villagers,’ he said tightly. ‘As for your parents … they won’t like it any more than mine will. But they’ll accept it. They’ll have no choice.’
    She shook her head and the late afternoon sunlight danced in her hair. ‘I don’t care what the villagers think of me, or what they might say or do. But I do care about my parents. They will be regarded as collaborators. You may be able to protect them now, but you won’t be able to protect them when the war is over.’
    Her words hung between them. When the war was over. To both of them it meant different things. For Dieter, it meant the subjection of the British. The surrender of the Americans. A France permanently under German control. A France where no retribution could be taken by the populace against those who had bowed to the inevitable and had joined forces with their oppressors.
    To Lisette it meant a France that was free. A France no longer under the heel of Nazi domination. A France where those who had collaborated would be seen as traitors and treated as such.
    They stared at each other, French and German, and the war rose up between them like a high, bloody wall, separating and dividing. At the expression in her eyes Dieter’s jaw clenched. ‘Oh no,’ he said savagely, reaching out for her and pulling her against him. ‘We’re not going to fall into that trap, Lisette. Let the war take care of itself. It has nothing to do with you and me and we must never allow it to do so. I shall tell your parents that we are going to marry, but there is no need for anyone else to know. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.’ He pressed his mouth against her hair. He would take her to Berlin. There would be difficulties but none that he could not overcome.
    His voice was the voice of a man accustomed to making decisions and not having those decisions questioned. She leaned against him, sliding her arms around the lean tautness of his waist, resting her head against his chest, the sense of refuge that she had felt when his arms had closed around her in the rear of the Horch returning in full force. His lips brushed her temples, her cheeks, and then closed hungrily on her willing mouth, and she knew that no power on earth would ever separate them. Not family. Not country. Nothing.
    â€˜Love me,’ she begged in hungry, hoarse tones she scarcely recognised. ‘Please love me!’
    His muscles tensed as he exerted every last vestige of his iron-strong self-control. ‘No,’ he said, pressing her back against the pillows, his strong hands cupping her breasts, his mouth a mere fraction from hers. ‘Not while you’re so weak that you can hardly stand.’
    â€˜Then when?’ Her shamelessness devastated her.
    A grin tugged at the comers of his mouth. ‘When Auge says you no longer need his