Portrait of a Love by Joan Wolf

me?”
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Such a simple question, Isabel thought. And one week ago it would have provoked such a simple answer. But now, she was not so sure.
    She bent her head and looked at her hands clasped in her lap. A week ago, instantly, unreflectingly, she would have said no; she would have said, Go ahead, move out, leave me alone. Tonight she sat listening to the deep nocturnal silence of the house and knew she was poised on the brink of perhaps the most momentous decision of her life.
    This was the man. There was something in him that reached out to her, that called to something deep in her own nature. She was suddenly quite sure that if she said no to Leo now, she would spend the rest of her life haunted by an irredeemable sense of failure and loss. Even now as she sat silently contemplating her own tensely clasped hands, she had a sense of something beginning to slip irrevocably away.
    She ran her tongue across dry lips. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.
    “I know you are.”
    Her head bent farther forward.  She had guarded herself for so long the thought of throwing away all those years of safety terrified her. Leo sat at the other end of the sofa, quite motionless, and now he slowly put out his hand on the sofa between them, fingers curved upward ready to cradle hers.
    “Give me your hand.” It was said very gently, very softly, and she raised her eyes to his face. His hair had fallen forward over his forehead. His blue eyes were brilliant. Very slowly she unlocked her fingers and put her hand into his. Leo’s hand completely engulfed hers, and Isabel shivered as he raised his other hand to touch first her cheek and then her mouth.
    “Leo.” It was scarcely a breath, but he heard it and suddenly moved toward her. He put an arm around her shoulder and she turned her face into his shirt. She could feel his hand on her hair, gently stroking it.
    “You have such beautiful hair,” he was saying. “Isabel.” At the sound of her name she took her face out of his shoulder and looked up.
    His kiss was not the gentle, careful kiss he had given her once before. This was something quite different, something Isabel had never known. She could lose herself in this man. She knew it, instinctively, had always known it, she realized now. She felt from the urgency of his kiss how much he wanted her, but she held back a little, frightened of letting down the defenses she had so carefully built over the years. But the flame burning in Leo was so bright. She slid her arms around his neck and let her mouth open under the pressure of his.
    His hands lightly touched her narrow waist and then one hand slid under her sweater and moved up to cup her breast. Isabel closed her eyes in pleasure, and after a minute her hand began to caress the thick bright hair at the back of his head.
    “Let’s go upstairs,” he murmured. The touch of his hand on her breast was exquisite. Isabel opened her eyes and looked at the pale-golden hair that slipped so easily through her fingers.
    “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
    He rose with his distinctive fluid grace and, bending for a minute, picked her up as easily as if she had been a child. He carried her easily too, up the narrow stairs and into her bedroom, where he set her on her feet beside the bed.
    “You should know this,” he said to her. His hands were on her shoulders and he was standing so close that Isabel’s head was tilted far back to look up into his face. “I wanted you from the first moment I set eyes on you.”
    Isabel’s lips parted a little. “You did?”
    “I did.” His voice sounded normal, but she could see, above the opened collar of his shirt, a pulse beating rapidly under the lightly tanned skin. His hands slid down her shoulders to her elbows. “I do.”
    Isabel held the ribbed bottom of her sweater and, without saying a word, pulled it over her head. She slowly and carefully began to unbutton her shirt. Her eyes looked up at him with a dark