The Moonlight Mistress. Victoria Janssen

said, “Do you think the body matters, when it is the soul that is immortal?”

      She stroked her free hand over his rib cage. “How can we separate ourselves from our bodies?” she asked. “Would anyone desire that?”

      She did not think she had ever met a man who would have had such a conversation, especially with a woman. It made her belly shiver, to think of souls mingling like two chemicals in a beaker. What would be the end product? Apply heat, she thought. Distill.

      She said, “I want you inside me. I don’t want to be alone.”

      Pascal kissed her, groaning deep in his throat when she squeezed the length of his cock. Lucilla needed his weight on her, enveloping her. She turned onto her back and he followed, bracing himself above her with his injured arm. “Closer,” she said, spreading her thighs. Air tickled and cooled the hot folds of her sex, and she squirmed.

      “Soon.” Streetlights limned his tousled hair, the prominent bridge of his nose, the long line of his jaw. He traced his hand down her cheek, her neck, her breast, her hip. He ran his fingers through her pubic hair and thumbed apart her folds, slicking his hand and circling with his thumb until he brushed her clitoris. Lucilla had gone rigid with anticipation, and now a cry escaped her. Her awareness spiraled inward, down and in, as his thumb circled and pressed, circled and pressed, until the whole area was so sensitized she thought she could come from a puff of air. She was moaning, she knew that because she had to gasp in a breath. Pascal pressed the heel of his hand into her mound, slow and steady, imprinting her with pleasure. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to breathe and make this stop. It built, and built still more. She cramped with pangs of ecstasy, and then it overflowed, spilling out of her, jerking her helplessly in its wake.

      All her strings had been cut. She lay gasping while Pascal kissed her forehead, then her mouth. She could feel him smiling. “In me,” she murmured. “We haven’t finished this experiment.”

      She held him close as he guided his cock into her, both of them flinching at first from the intensity of the sensation. She laid her cheek against his chest, liking the slide of his flesh on her face as his cock pressed the walls of her vagina. She flung one arm over her head and he twined his fingers with hers as he thrust and withdrew. After a time, she found the strength to lift her hips to his, working with him toward climax. It all flowed into one sensation of lazy pleasure, an endless rocking and slapping like floating in the sea. She did not climax again, but she didn’t mind. It was too fascinating to concentrate on Pascal, the feel and sound and musky salt scent of him as he lost himself to physical pleasure.

      At last, he growled, his fingers tightening on hers as his hips rapidly jerked. She felt his cock twitching within her and kissed his chest lingeringly until his crisis passed and he sagged onto her, panting. A few moments later, he kissed her, withdrew with a sigh and disposed of the condom. Lucilla snuggled into his arms when he turned back to her, drifting in a lake of well-being. Their skins were slick with sweat in the summer air, but lying still, the breeze began to cool them. Her eyelids drooped. From the limp weight of Pascal’s arm on her, he was already asleep.

      After one of the worst days she could remember, and the most surprising evening, Lucilla slept the best sleep of her life, at least until an elbow dug painfully into her breast. She shoved Pascal’s arm away. His eyes opened and he blinked at her, dazed. “Quelle heure est-il?” he asked.

      “Go back to sleep,” Lucilla mumbled. A loud noise from the street sent her bolt upright, clutching his forearm. “A gun?”

      “Backfire, from an auto,” he said.

      “Are you sure?”

      “I have had army training. I know the sound of a gun.” He turned to her and smoothed her hair away from her face. “You must not be afraid. It will obscure your thinking.”

      “You aren’t afraid?” She thought he must be, given that he had embraced her in the night for comfort before he had done so for sex. She wished, now, that she had been brave enough to draw nearer to him. The mere act of joining together had strengthened her, soothing the near panic that had buzzed along her nerves like bees.

       She sensed him smile. “Were I an English gentleman, I would say I wasn’t afraid. It would be a lie, of course.”

      “No, it’s a way of pretending until the pretending feels real.” Lucilla grabbed his wrist and turned it to see his wristwatch in the light from the window. Three o’clock. “It will be light soon,” she said. “If there are no trains, I had thought we might find someone with a wagon who would be willing to take us closer to the border. Perhaps one of the men who brought deliveries to the Institute. They will recognize me, and I have some money.”

      “If we can reach my colleague at the Institute, perhaps we can borrow his motorcar,” he said. “That is why I came here in the first place, to see him. Perhaps he will feel obligated.”

      “You sound doubtful.” Lucilla drew up her knees and rested her chin on them.

      Pascal turned to his side, facing her. “I was…dismayed, by Herr Doktor Professor Kauz. We had never met before last week, only corresponded. He requested I come here, insisted he must share a discovery of incalculable importance.”

      “Kauz,” Lucilla said, remembering a paper-skinned old man with wild hair and a cane. “A biologist as well as a chemist, with a grant from the kaiser’s special fund. He was rude to me.” In truth, he’d said a woman who worked alongside men was no better than—she’d had to research the German word he’d used, which turned out to mean whore. From his vicious tone when he’d said it, and his frequent vituperative glances, she hadn’t been surprised by the meaning.

      Pascal hesitated then said in a rush, “I did not like his laboratory. He used animals in ways that were cruel, even for science. He said I was soft, and all Frenchmen doubly so.”

      “You study—”

       “Everything,” he said, with no trace of arrogance that she could detect. “I have a special fondness for maths and engineering, but my work now, it is to find the new things in biology, on behalf of an agency in the government. Since I am paid for that, and I prefer to eat and provide a home for my cats, I cannot practice engineering as I would like. Though I find biology is something like engineering.”

      “The new things?” Lucilla asked, still wrestling with the image of Pascal with pet cats.

      “The things that will be of interest, that will reward further study. I report on these things to a board, and they decide who is to receive funding. I have met many…eccentrics, I suppose you would say, who believe their work is vital. None discomfited me like Herr Kauz.”

      “He’s vicious,” she said without thinking.

      Pascal stared at her for a moment, in silence, then he touched her leg, petting it idly. “Yes,” he said. “That is there, beneath the surface. Perhaps it is not a good idea to ask a favor of a man who is vicious, and who has a dislike of women and Frenchmen. But the others at the Institute do not know me, nor I them. I know where to find Kauz.”

      “We can only try,” Lucilla said. “A motor would be much better than our other choices, and there are not many available in this town. He can only say no.”

      “He could do far worse than that, I am sure,” Pascal said.

      “It might be worth the risk,” she said. “He need not know I am involved.” She paused. “If I am.”

      “You are certainly involved now,” Pascal said, sounding affronted. “I did not intend that we should fuck and part.”

      “I might swoon, that is so romantic,” Lucilla said.

      He glared at her. “I will see Herr Kauz alone. You will wait nearby. If he refuses us, then your plan will be next. Where will we begin?”

      “I’ll speak to Frau Greifen, at the coffeehouse