Her Hungry Heart (15 page)

But now he was here again and the world was as it had once been before for them. How could she have forgotten the exquisite sense of pleasure she had experienced with him then, that she knew was awaiting her now? Seeing him again, the years rolled back. She was alive as she had never been since his departure. How could she not have noticed that? How deep must she have buried her feelings for him. This restlessness, the sexual hunger she had suffered all day. Had she been making herself ready for something that was as imminent as his arrival? She should have known something was pending.

‘I am sorry. But, you see, I never had a telephone number to call. Only an address to return to.’

That voice. How hungry she had been all those years to hear it, to see him standing there, and she had never known it. He was in her heart again, a place she had never even dreamed he had inhabited.

‘I have an unlisted telephone number,’ she told him in a trance-like state, thinking how banal her words sounded. Then there was silence, neither able to find words. But silence was their friend, playing Cupid. Finally he found a word.

‘Sorry.’ And the tremor of emotion in his voice was unmistakable. It took several seconds for him to gain control of himself. Then he continued, ‘Seeing you again has quite taken me aback.’

His confession made it easier for Barbara. She smiled at him as he walked to the edge of the balcony and placed his hands on the balustrade. She told him, ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Karel.’

She walked around the table towards him. He took off his hat and threw it behind him. And now she could see his face clearly. He seemed, if possible, more handsome and sensually attractive than she had remembered him. Four
years nearly, yet his face looked more youthful. Surprising, since his hair had gone white in wide slashes at the temples, and more salt-and-pepper everywhere else. He laid his raincoat over the balustrade on the stairs leading down into the drawing room. They walked into each other’s arms.

‘Don’t speak. Please don’t speak,’ he whispered in her ear, the warmth of his breath caressing the lobe. It sent shivers down her spine. The accent still with those honeyed overtones, a seductive bedroom voice that promised so much. He took her in his arms, tilted her chin up and studied her face. As he kissed her eyes he could hear her heart pounding. More kisses and their lips parted. She sighed, and was overcome by her feelings for him. She began to cry and to place kisses all over his face. All the pent-up emotion, love and passion, the carnal desire she had wrestled with all day, exploded into tears and smiles. It was an extraordinary way to behave, but he understood. He held her tight in his arms and caressed her. She could sense his sexual need for her. His desire, gone out of control. She yielded to him, wanting only to be riven by him, to submit to their hunger for each other. She tore at his clothes, like a voracious animal biting into the side of his neck, his chin. She bruised his nipples with her teeth. She was like a wild cat from the exotic dark of some green jungle.

He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. He put her down near the dressing table, fumbled with the buttons on the cashmere dress, and then, unable to wait, tore it open. She covered her eyes, not out of fright or anxiety over the loss of a dress: it was more because she was unable to cope with the wild erotic joy she saw in his eyes.

She felt his hands on her breasts, his mouth devouring them. Then he found her lips and sealed her sighs of pleasure with a long and hungry kiss. He lifted her off the floor and she wrapped her legs around his waist. She could feel that massive erect penis probing the crack of her bottom. He fumbled with his free hand to find on the
dressing table a pot of scented cream, and grabbed it. He walked with her thus. Between kisses he told her, ‘We are like the animals in the jungle.’

‘Oh God, take me, Karel,’ she begged in a voice husky with need. She was so ripe, so ready, and he knew it and loved it. He unwound her from him and bent her over the bed, her back to him. He would take her, in just that position, because he wanted her to feel the deepest of penetration, to achieve the greater orgasm. He removed the lid from the pot and tossed it across the room. He scooped out great blobs of the luscious, scented cream. She felt the cold smoothness and his searching fingers between her cunt lips. His fingers pushing it into her already moist cunt.

‘Look into the mirror,’ he told her breathlessly. The scene was raunchily magnificent. He spread her legs wide apart, gripped her by the waist. No ceremony. He thrust swiftly and violently just once. Then he was deep inside her. She tried to bite her hand to stifle the scream. She felt pain and pleasure as his body slapped against her bottom. He could hear her muffled cries, the sounds of her uncontrolled pleasure at being fucked by him.

Once deeply inside her, they remained standing and were quiet, trying to ease off the wild abandon with which he had taken her. He bent over her and used his hands to caress her, whispering to her how delectable he found her, what joy it was to be inside her again. He placed his lips against her bare back and kissed it. He could feel his heart pounding. Then it began for them, long and steady passionate fucking, until he moved in and out of her with ease. She came, a series of orgasms. With each one, pure bliss, sheer ecstasy. His own desire to fuck her went out of control. He used the flat of his hands across her bottom. He used them roughly, holding her in his tight grip by her shoulders, all the time moving to a carnal rhythm that drove them further into sexual oblivion. Anything, everything, for their selfish lust. Never stopping, he managed to reach
under her and to find her clitoris. Now they were both feeling the extreme anguish of lust. They came together in a crescendo of passion. And neither of them cared that he might crush her every bone to powder, so tight did he cleave to her.

They lay there spent, exhausted. Finally, somewhat recovered, he pulled her into his arms, caressed her hair and licked her lips and throat. ‘Make love to me.’ It was not a plea, but a demand.

He pulled her head back by the hair and looked into her face. And repeated, ‘Make love to me. I want you to master me, to take me sexually as you have never done any other man. I want to feel that there is no one who could ever go the sexual route we have trodden together. That none of your lovers can or would give themselves to you as I will, or take you as I have and brand you theirs with depraved sex as I intend to.’ She obeyed him.

He had never had a woman take possession of him as Barbara did that afternoon. He submitted to her mouth, her hands. She matched him in her violent passion to possess. They watched each other in the Venetian mirror. In oral sex she was as lustful and magnificent as when adopting the role of sexually submissive partner. Lying on top of him, her face over his cock, she opened her lips to lick and suck him, while dipping her fingers into the same pot of cream. She covered his luscious plum-shaped balls hanging in their soft sac. Reaching beneath them, she entered that small tight place with her fingers. He was insane with excitement. The woman controlled him, made him submit. They had the power of sex and each of them held that over the other for nothing more than their mutual sexual pleasure. Theirs was the desire of wanting to give and to please, to take everything that sexual lust and depravity had to offer. It was a kind of sexual insanity where excess and imagination took them over. They were using several jade dildos on each other at the same time, and their mouths and tongues, when
their orgasms could be contained no longer. That special ambrosia, the taste of sperm, a woman’s orgasmic nectar: they experienced it together and revelled in their lust. Sadly, reluctantly, they removed the jade and drifted into their unique haven of sexual ecstasy, that place beyond people and thoughts and dreams. They were there, one with each other, where the body and the ego die, that Elysian field of pure, unadulterated sexual pleasure.

‘I hadn’t planned it this way. But then I saw you and I could feel your hunger was as strong as mine. I make no excuses – I came alive with a desire that was stronger than any I had intended for us.’

‘All day I have been restless, lost. I only came together when you touched me,’ she told him.

They kissed. She watched him climb into his trousers and walk barefooted, bare-chested from the room, only to return minutes later with his arms full of white roses and present them to her. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her.

‘I can’t see a white rose without thinking of you. I sent them whenever I could.’

It was strange that Mimi never entered her mind. Nor could she equate anything she had heard about Count Karel Stefanik with this man to whom she felt so connected. She had no questions because she wanted to hear no answers.

Then he asked, ‘Dine with me. I want to sit among people and have them see you, watch their eyes as they admire you. I want them to look at us and know there is something special going on between us. I want to show you off, carry you on my arm, walk into a room with you, smile at you across a table, listen to you order a meal. I want to walk down the streets where we once ran, sit next to you in a taxi, feel the everyday things of life with you. I am as hungry for that as I was to fuck you.’

She laughed. ‘You sound like a crazed lover.’

‘I am a crazed lover. I thought you realized that. Now dine with me. Say yes.’

‘Yes. Oh yes. Please.’

‘I must meet a man at the Plaza Hotel at eight. That gives you time to dress. It’s important, but it won’t take long.’

How could she say no to him? She was tired, exhausted, but she didn’t want to leave him any more than he wanted to leave her. How could she disappoint him?

They bathed together. He recited a long sensuous poem. Partly in Czech, partly in English. He told her, ‘If I could write lines like that, it would be because I once loved a woman like you.’

She wanted to cry. She fought back tears. She knew he was telling her that at that moment he was loving her more than anything or anyone. More, maybe, than life itself. Was that why it was so sweet to die in orgasm with him and be reborn in his arms? He touched her soul in a very special way as no other man had ever done. He marked her forever with his lust for her. If she hadn’t known that before, she knew it now. How could they sustain the power of their passion? The answer, of course, was that they would be unable to. Life would step in and cool it down. She knew how each of them would strive not to allow that to happen. They would do what they must to keep it as remarkable and alive a love as it was. Or settle for nothing.

She was standing in a black satin chemise trimmed in lace, looking in her wardrobe for something to wear. He walked up to her. ‘Choose something lovely, grand, very elegant. Then, when we get to the hotel, I’ll change into black tie and my dress-suit. This is a celebration I want us never to forget.’

How could anyone be happier than she felt at that moment? He kissed her shoulder, then went to sit on the bed and watch her dress. She chose black lace, stunningly elegant with tight, long sleeves that only just covered the shoulder and clung to her breasts. It was backless to the waist and had a skirt cut on the bias. It was simplicity itself, pure, lavish elegance. Around her neck was clasped a slim
necklace of square-cut diamonds, and she wore large square diamonds in her ears. Slipping into high-heeled satin shoes she glimpsed herself in the mirror and was surprised at how young she looked. She ran her fingers through her hair, gave it a side parting and let it fall girlishly.

‘I shan’t dress my hair.’

‘No, you’re perfect.’

She smiled. He even understood that.

‘I need to look as I feel, young, a slip of a girl, when I am with you.’ She smiled teasingly.

She chose a black silk-velvet cape lined in mink. He raised the large, soft, dramatic hood and draped it over her hair. She held his coat for him and watched him place his hat at a rakish angle. Together they left for the Plaza.

Chapter 13

Barbara was sipping a perfectly chilled martini while standing at the window in Karel’s suite. She was looking across the Plaza to the park and the car lights flashing up and down Fifth Avenue. Since Karel had walked into her life again her mind had been in limbo.

He opened the door from the bedroom and walked into the sitting room while buttoning his dinner jacket. She was able, for a second, to take an objective look at this man and his continental good looks, his devastating charm. With him she shared a special happiness, one that was indefinable. No woman had ever held him, she was certain of that. His temperament was not monogamous. Barbara may have sensed with what pride he walked with her on his arm, how much he enjoyed their closeness, the delight he took in his adoration of her. But she had no illusions about Count Karel Stefanik. Theirs was a living-in-the-moment kind of sexual love.

When they had walked through the lobby of the Plaza, she saw how they had attracted the attention of both men and women. Barbara Dunmellyn was a head-turner, and she knew it. But the looks they drew from other guests at the hotel that evening were not for her, but for them, and generated by Karel. His manner, his magnetic charm, had not dimmed with the years.

She viewed him now in his dinner suit. Very English, Savile Row, correct, elegant. He seemed so different a man in his dress suit to the lover who had arrived with white
roses. She took several steps towards him, wanting him to take her in his arms, this new and strange man who was smiling at her. She felt, suddenly, just a little afraid of the power of his charm.

There was a knock at the door. He ignored it, preoccupied with picking up on her thoughts. He went to her, tilted her chin with his hand, kissed her lightly on the lips and told her, ‘All this is something other than what we are. All this …’ And he touched the lapels of his dress suit, the black lace covering her arm.

‘All this,’ he repeated, ‘is fun and games and real life. It has nothing to do with what we have together.’ The knock again, louder, more insistent. ‘Neither of us must ever forget that. It’s the outside world and, good as it may be, it’s not so rich, so exciting as our own private world. I’ll prove that to you later.’ The way he looked at her, she knew he meant every word.

‘Now, this man. I apologize.’ He shrugged his shoulders, and added, ‘Seeing him is
very
important.’

He walked away from her to answer the door. ‘Mr Bensen?’

‘Yes. You are Count Karel Stefanik?’

‘That’s right. Come in. At last we meet, Mr Bensen. I hope you don’t mind. A close friend.’ Karel put Barbara and Mr Bensen through introductions. ‘I want to thank you and your department for expediting my papers. A drink, Mr Bensen?’

He accepted the offer.

The Count was nothing like Mr Bensen imagined he would be. Here were no signs of stress. To Mr Bensen he seemed untouched by a long and hard war where he had been hunted both by the Nazi bastards and by certain factions in his own country. The latest files had created in Mr Bensen’s mind a different profile of the man standing in front of him. He had always been curious about a man who chose to be a hero instead of a father, to abandon comfort
and freedom and a chance to make a new life in a country away from war. How this guy must have hardened himself to give up his child for her own safety. And to have ensured it by staying away from her until he had set up a future solid and secure enough for them never to part again. He was a guy who knew how to be mean to be kind. That had to count for something.

Mr Bensen took a swallow of his drink and placed the cut-glass tumbler on the table. He had been carrying a large brown manila envelope with him when he arrived. It lay next to him on the sofa. Now he picked it up, placed it on the coffee table in front of him and twisted the tiny metal clips to open it. He withdrew its contents and spread them out in front of him.

‘There you are, Count. It’s all there and all official. Signed, sealed, and now delivered. You are an American citizen, and so is …’ Mr Bensen hesitated and looked over at Barbara Dunmellyn, sensing discretion was in order ‘… your immediate family. Here are the papers.’ Mr Bensen shoved them across the table towards the Count. ‘And here are passports. You and your family can enter and leave the United States any time you like.’ He handed the passports over to Karel. ‘As soon as possible you will have to up-date your family’s photographs. The enclosed document will cover you for that for a year.’

There was no doubting the significance of those passports and documents to Karel or how they affected him. For a few seconds he seemed to lose control of his emotions. A sadness, a kind of pain, crossed his face, settled in his eyes. He rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. He seemed for a moment suddenly older, quite worn out. Barbara half expected him to falter, to take a seat in order to recover his equilibrium. But Count Karel Stefanik was made of sterner fibre. He drew himself up seemingly taller than his six foot two inches. The light in his face, extinguished for a few seconds, returned. He replaced the
passports and papers to their envelope. At the drinks table he poured himself a generous whisky. Turning to face his guests, he raised his glass and said, ‘To a new beginning for me and my child. A new life. A family life. Mr Bensen, you are here like a messenger from the gods. Until you arrived with the missing pieces of a new life for us, I daren’t go to find my child.’

He raised the tumbler of whisky and drank. Then he told Barbara and Mr Bensen, ‘We have been separated by war and tyranny, and finally my own stupid faith in mankind’s will to be free, live in peace and respect his neighbour. I turned a blind eye for too long, and then almost too late made an extravagant gesture for my beliefs and my country. It could have cost my daughter her life. Never again. Mr Bensen, you’ve delivered the foundations of a new life for us to build on here in America. Until I had that to offer my child, I could not disrupt her life. Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts.’ He raised the tumbler to his lips and swallowed what remained of the amber liquid in the bottom of the glass.

The Count smiled. He looked and sounded incredibly happy, sure of himself again. Mr Bensen rose from his chair. For the first time since Karel walked back into Barbara’s life, she thought of Mimi. How Sophia had described to her that first day she met a wrecked child, painfully thin, biting her lip, wringing her slender, red and roughened hands. A displaced child, with hunger and pain in her eyes, sitting in the lorry of Joe Pauley the pedlar on a hot summer’s day. How Mimi’s dream was all that she lived for: that her father would come and find her. And how far Mimi had come from then until now.

Barbara had no idea what Karel meant, ‘Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts.’ A location, clearly. But how could she know that he thought that was where he would find Mimi? She knew nothing about Mimi’s life, except what had been sketched in by the Queen the first time Barbara was told
about Mimi. Mimi never talked about her life before Beechtrees. In fact, much to Barbara’s surprise and relief, she hardly mentioned her father either.

Barbara had never told Mimi she knew Karel, or all about Mimi’s past. What could she have said? I had a three-night stand, an excursion into sexual oblivion with your father, and fell in love? A few flowers, and he vanished from my life to fight a war, just as he did from yours. Such a confession was impossible on several counts: the obvious one, Mimi would be shattered that he had been in America and had made no contact, and for Barbara’s own selfish reasons. She cherished the very private world she and Karel experienced with each other and wanted to keep her Karel interlude all to herself. That was part of what they had been all about, selfish, one to one, love that excluded the world and everyone in it. She had not been bound to give that up.

Now for those same selfish reasons Barbara found it impossible just to burst out with the news that a series of incredible circumstances had led her to befriend Count Karel Stefanik’s child Mimi. She rationalized her silence by recognizing the emotional traumas father and daughter had suffered, were still suffering. The emotional bond between Karel and Mimi was intense. They must be allowed to discover each other on their own terms, in their own time, and in their own way. She remained silent.

Barbara could not but feel that the war had taken a greater toll on Karel than she had originally thought. His few minutes of distress shocked her. She was experiencing at first hand and for the first time how the war had torn apart, partially destroyed, just two of millions of lives. To remain silent until after Mimi and Karel Stefanik had united their lives, caught up with their pasts, and begun their new life seemed as important as her own selfish reasons for silence. Anything else seemed too intrusive, too cruel. And remaining silent prevented her from shattering Karel’s dream that he had done what he had done to Mimi to
ensure her survival, his belief that he had cushioned the blows of war for her by surrounding her with comfort and love.

‘Count Stefanik …’ started Mr Bensen.

‘No, not here in America, Mr Bensen. It sounds too phoney, too pretentious, and we titled refugees seem two-a-penny in New York. No, I think we drop the title from now.’

Mr Bensen tried again. ‘Sir, have you a plan of how to go about this reunion? If we can help, you have my number.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, Mr Bensen. I’ve made no plans. For years I have been taking one step at a time, especially concerning my daughter. The last step was to obtain and have in my own hands the right papers to secure our future. I will now think about the next step.’ With those words Mr Bensen was dismissed, politely but firmly.

Barbara and Karel dined in the Oak Room on oysters and a perfect Montrachet. It was followed by green turtle soup, roast partridge and wild rice, purée of celeriac, and tiny thin potato pancakes fried to a crisp. With it a Chambertin the colour of garnets and rubies, with a nose that carried the scent of musky, sun-drenched grapes aged in oak and time, and made one think of dark red damask roses and deep purple lavender. For pudding crêpes Suzette.

It was one of those meals that only happen when two people are totally in place for each other. Where anything else, even a loved child, is made to vanish by the sheer power of an intimate relationship pulsating with life. When every morsel of food is enjoyed ten times over, every sip of wine teases the taste buds and fills the mouth with an ambrosia fit to be served at Valhalla. The sensation of epicurean pleasure, sensual attraction that promises sexual delights, lustful abandonment of the body and soul, makes small-talk redundant.

Each of them in their own way was wrapped up in the other. It made a kind of magic for them as a couple. They
felt it and so did others in the room. The waiters, the mâitre d’ and other diners caught themselves stealing glances at the beautiful couple enjoying the power of passionate love. They had to admire how Barbara and Karel were free and happy enough to wear their feelings like a cloak of diamonds for all to admire and enjoy. This was not just another couple out to dinner. These were lovers in the greatest sense of the word. Just to be in that dining room that night and sense erotic love, an aura of passion, lifted spirits throughout the room. It created an atmosphere, a buzz. That infectious something that people rise to.

‘There are so many questions that I should want to ask, but I can’t think of one. Not one that would matter,’ she told him, apropos of nothing.

‘It occurred to me only in the lift going up to your flat that there might be a man in your life. That I might be making a fool of myself. That it had been years and that you might have forgotten me. But none of those things mattered. I had to take the chance.’

Their conversation died. They savoured instead the silence between them. It was like that for them all through the meal. Several times each tried to make conversation for several sentences. Then once more they would drift off course. A smile to replace words, a shrug of the shoulders, flippant laughter at themselves. Often through the meal he would raise her hand, take it in his and stroke it, kiss her fingers, place light, sweet kisses on her arm. The romance evident in them excited envy in every woman present. It is difficult not to respond to an awareness of love.

After dinner they walked through the lobby to the small, intimate night club. In a dark corner of the room they drank Calvados as he whispered, ‘You are that rare breed of woman that inspires lust
and
love. You’re a dangerous lady, Barbara.’ And then removed her earring and kissed and licked her ear lobe.

She took the earring from his hand and replaced it on her
ear. ‘I like “inspire lust”. Would you care to elucidate?’ she challenged. Tilting her head back and to one side and teasing him with a seductive glance, a wicked smile, she raised her hand to stop him from speaking, ‘“And love”. Ah, I inspire that too. Tell me about that.’

He was about to speak, but she silenced him by placing a finger over his lips, and caressed his lower lip with the oval tip of a long glossy red finger nail. ‘Dangerous? You see me as a dangerous woman. How dangerous?’ But before he could speak, she took his hand and, rising from her chair, ‘I think I would like to dance.’

He laughed, enjoying her seductive, provocative charm. She was taunting him with her sexuality, exciting his lust for her and they both knew it. She was playing with him and it worked. Holding her close to him, their bodies moving as one to the rhythm of the music, she incited him to tell her in a sexy whisper, ‘You’re like an aphrodisiac. You set my sexual fantasies aflame. But you know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Barbara rubbed herself up against him. She moved sensuously in his arms. He felt her heat for him, her sexual hunger. It mingled freely with his own.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘Everything.’

‘Sexual? With me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t fail you.’

‘I know.’

‘You are glorious both in and out of your sensuality. I adore you. That’s why you are so dangerous. Because I sense that I will want you always, all of our life. I have never felt that about any other woman.’