A Perfect Marriage (6 page)

Celine tried to step back, her foot crunching down on a festive ribbon bow, and instinctively she pulled away to look down at what damage she'd done.

But as her mouth left his, Max stooped and swung her up into his arms, striding straight to the bed.

He fell onto it with her, and his hands went to the shoulders of the wrap, shoving it aside, while his mouth found the

  
 
hollow
of her throat. He wrenched at the garment, momentarily lifting his head, a heavy frown on his face, and Celine moved her arms, slipping them free of the sleeves. He seemed likely to tear something if she didn't help.

Max grunted and bent to return to her mouth, while his hands roved over her shoulders and arms, then found the straps of the nightgown and lowered them with a swift jerk, raising his head so that he could see her breasts.

She felt them tingle and peak at the look in his eyes, the tight buds hardening instantly under the quick, almost rough caress of his palm across them before he lowered his hand to unfasten his belt.

Celine gasped as the buckle came free and she heard the slide of the zip. "What are you doing?" Max always took his time, he was slow and tender and considerate, not like this-hasty, importunate, impatient.

He looked at her, his eyes alight, his cheeks darkened with colour. "I'm making love to my wife," he said, pausing to get his shoes off. She'd never before known him to lie down with them on. The shoes were flung to the ground, and his navy socks, followed immediately by his pants and underpants. He knelt over her, his hands gliding up her thighs, rucking up the flimsy gown. "Undo my shirt, will you?"

It sounded more like an order than a request. Not knowing whether to be shocked or amused, she found herself complying. Max dealt with the sleeve buttons himself, and shucked off the shirt, his loosened tie going with it. "Good," he said with satisfaction, and lowered himself between her thighs as he nudged them apart.

Her eyes widened. In a voice high with surprised indignation, she asked, "Are you going to rape me?"

He looked very intent, and rather ferocious, but his expression changed as he placed both his hands on her breasts. His fingers closing on them, he said softly, "Would I need to?" Then he brought his mouth down to them, and took one with his lips, circling the pouting centre with his tongue, worrying it gently with his teeth while his hand teased
the
 
other
, until she gasped, and a pulsating wave of heat shot from her breast to her belly and down her thighs.

Max's head lifted, his eyes glittering with passion. "Would I need to?" he demanded again. His hands squeezed and kneaded, creating a strange, erotic pain.

Celine swallowed. It was extraordinary. She'd never been so aroused so fast. It was scarcely five minutes since he'd first taken her by the hand. She shook her head, definitely shocked now, but also incredibly stimulated.

Max didn't
smile,
he looked quite relentless as he moved swiftly and surely, so that she caught chokingly at her breath when she felt the hot length of him, so deep and inexorable. She saw him close his eyes, his mouth tight with fierce control, and his fingers suddenly raked into her hair, lifting her to him as he kissed her with blind, primitive passion.

She felt him drive into the centre of her again and again, and she arched her body, opened her mouth in brazen invitation, so that his tongue plunged into her throat, thrusting, thrusting, and then he shuddered, and she felt the heat flow from his body to hers, spreading like liquid fire through her limbs, and a dark starburst exploded about her, until her eyes were blinded and her ears sang and her entire being became molten and weightless.

His mouth finally left hers, drawing back, but he still had his eyes tightly closed, and a great unsteady breath made his body tremble. His lips were parted, and there was a faint shiny film of sweat on his forehead. The centre light blazed down on them from the ceiling.

Gradually Max's breathing slowed and steadied. He rolled away from her and lay prone with his face in the pillow next to hers. His voice muffled, he said, "I'm sorry."

Celine pulled the nightdress down over her thighs and wriggled up the shoulder straps, then searched for the tumbled, twisted sheet. "It's all right," she said. "I enjoyed it, too." In fact she felt
,
if still somewhat surprised, quite mellow and sated.

  
 
A ripple seemed to pass over his skin, as though he'd shivered. She smiled and arranged the sheet over his naked body, covering him to the waist.

Alcohol might have had more than something to do with Max's mood, but he'd admired her, even called her beautiful, and acted as though he literally couldn't wait another second to get her into bed with him. And she'd responded with an unwonted speed and passion. Sex that good after twelve years must indicate a healthy marriage, she thought. She reached into the drawer of the bedside table for a box of tissues. Maybe she wouldn't bother to finish wrapping the presents. It would be quite nice to snuggle up to her husband and go to sleep.

But someone had to turn out the light-at the switch by the door. She sighed, and Max stirred, throwing himself over onto his back, staring at the ceiling. Perhaps the light was too bright, because almost immediately he threw a forearm up over his eyes.

"I'll turn it off," Celine said, folding back the sheet. "What?" He didn't move his arm.

"I'll turn the light off." She got out of bed, treading on Max's discarded clothes. She picked them up and laid them on the blanket box at the foot of the bed, and crossed the room to the light switch.

With her finger on it she was already turning to go back to bed. In the instant before the room went abruptly black, she saw that Max had lowered his arm and was watching her with a concentrated, yet almost bleak expression. The image of his face remained imprinted on her retina for seconds afterwards, and she didn't move straight away, but waited until it had faded before moving cautiously back across the carpet, avoiding the wrappings and ribbons.

She lay down on the bed, finding the edge of the sheet again and shifting sideways until she felt Max's warm skin against her own. She laid her hand on his chest, waiting for his arm to encircle her.

 
It was a moment or two before he moved to do it, but when he did he held her quite tightly. "Are you all right?" he
asked,
his voice low and troubled.

Celine gave a small laugh. "Of course I am. I didn't really think you'd rape me!"

"No," he said on a rather odd note. "I wouldn't."

"Well, then..." She adjusted herself more comfortably against him. "Go to sleep." He might not have been drunk, but he was certainly affected, she thought, by the alcohol he'd had. She hoped he hadn't driven himself home.

It seemed he had, though. His car was in the garage beside hers when she went out the next morning. Max had shut himself up in his study after breakfast, saying that if he wanted to have a real holiday at Christmas, he had to bring a few things up to date first. And after an early phone call from her mother-in-law, Celine had promised to go to a nearby shopping centre to see if she could get a particular brand of cigars that Nancy bought for her husband every Christmas, but which was inexplicably difficult to obtain this year.

Christmas shopping was in full swing, the shops seething with people and the staff stretched thin. After exhausting every likely possibility, and succumbing to one or two extra stocking fillers for nieces and nephews, Celine made her way back to the car and set off for another suburban mall that she guessed Nancy might not have tried.

By the time she had found the cigars and arrived triumphantly with them at the Archer home, it was after twelve o'clock. She ended up staying for lunch and helping Nancy afterwards to hang streamers and decorations and trim the Christmas tree.

"The children used to do this when they were at home," Nancy said. "Remember how you kids used to compare presents every Christmas, and all of you would end up at either your place or ours?"

"Not only the kids," Celine reminded her, smiling.

"No. That's right." By teatime the two families would have drifted in one direction or the other, and usually finished the day by pooling lunch leftovers for the evening meal.

Nancy sat back, untangling coloured lights from the insulated wire that held them. "These darned things always get in a mess, and we put them away so carefully every year! I still haven't got used to only having you and Max, and Michelle's and David's families for Christmas. There's always heaps of food left over." The Archers and the Pentlands between them had mustered eight children, but some now lived too far away to make it home every year.

"Max thought perhaps you'd like to have Christmas off not be bothered with having us all for the day."

"Not be bothered? We love having you all here! Of course, if any of you wanted to do something else-I thought we'd only have Michelle every second year when she got married, but Tony's family celebrates for two days and
it's
very fluid, people just come and go all the time. So we're lucky, they come to us and then go on to his parents afterwards. And it's lovely to have the children."

Celine smiled. "Yes, Christmas wouldn't be the same without children around."

Nancy looked at her quickly, and then away. "There!" she said, holding up a tangle-free string of lights.
"At last."

On her way home Celine found herself humming Christmas carols and remembering childhood Christmases. There had been the time that she and Michelle were both given their first bicycles, ending the day with identical skinned knees.
The year that Max got a chemistry set, and had found it hilarious to ask the girls to sniff the pretty green "perfume" he'd made, nearly knocking them out with the vile stink of it.

And the time Celine's older brother had been caught kissing Michelle behind the big Christmas tree. Michelle, who already had a bust, and wore a bra while Celine despaired of ever needing one, had confided later that the kiss had made her toes tingle. Celine had thought it
incompre
 
hensible
that any girl could have found her gangling, bespectacled big brother attractive. Then Michelle asked, "What about Max, then? He doesn't wear glasses, anyway."

Celine had tried to imagine kissing Max, and burst into uncontrollable giggles. "Max!" she gasped finally. "You've got to be joking!" At thirteen Max suffered from acne, and had desperately tried to hide the height that had outstripped his classmates by hunching his bony adolescent shoulders. Blinded by familiarity, she had been naively unaware of the potential for dark, stern good looks in the gawky teenager.

Smiling at the memory, Celine touched the remote control and drove into the garage. Max was doing something at the workbench, and he turned and came to open the car door for her.

"You look happy," he said. "I wondered where you'd got to when you didn't come home for lunch."

"Sorry." She reached up and kissed his cheek. "I had it with your mum and dad. I was just thinking about when we were kids. I bet you never imagined you'd end up married to Michelle's skinny friend. What are you doing?"

He had a screwdriver in one hand. "The spare bathroom lock isn't working. If I can't fix it we'll have to get a new one. Did you ever think you'd end up married to Michelle's brother?"

"Not when you were thirteen or fourteen." She reached into the car to scoop up her parcels. "Fortunately, at twenty-six, you'd vastly improved."

"Most of us do." He made to take the parcels and she gave him the heaviest one. "You girls are luckier," he said as they walked to the house.

"Luckier?"

"Males go through an agonising period of not knowing when their voice or their body is going to betray them. They grow hairy and sweaty and seem to have extra hands and feet that keep getting in the way. And while they're turning into great ugly, hairy, smelly brutes, the girls they know are

  
 
becoming
these lovely mystical, unattainable creatures who are only interested in men several years older."

"What, girls you'd known all your life?" Celine asked sceptically.

He grinned.
"All girls.
Even sisters, to some extent.
At thirteen you were like a long-stemmed flower. I remember suddenly noticing that you had legs-not just useful things for scoring runs at beach rounders, but real dinkum female legs.
And...
other
things."

"I didn't have anything else." Celine started up the stairs. "You did so. I remember when you started getting a figure."

"I don't believe it. I was fifteen before I developed a respectable bust. And you hardly ever looked at
me,
you were in love with some girl in your class at high school. Angeline, wasn't it?"

"How do you know about Angeline?" he asked curiously, shouldering the bedroom door wider to allow her to precede him.

"Michelle told me. She said you had a picture of her hidden in your sock drawer with `I love you Angeline' on the back in your handwriting."

"The little sneak!"
Max said wrathfully. "What was she doing going through my sock drawer?"

"I don't know!" Thinking back, Celine added, "She needed some rugby socks, I think, for a fancy dress party we were going to. She was a bee, if I remember correctly."

"A bee?
In rugby socks?"
Max deposited the parcel he carried on to the bed and turned to her with raised brows.

"Stripes," Celine explained. "The school colours were yellow and black, remember? Anyway, she swore me to secrecy about Angeline. And then, of course, there was Tracee-with two e's-and Patty-with a y-and Melissa-"

"I had no idea you took such an interest in my adolescent love-life."

"I didn't. Michelle did. She felt it was important, in case you ended up saddling her with an unsuitable sister-in-law."