* They’re Playing Our Song *

YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE

by JoAnn Baca

“How was it?” Vincent opened his arms to Catherine after she closed their front door. He had missed her but was glad she had taken a rare afternoon away from everything in order to meet with her friends. She embraced him and then stepped back.

“Lunch was nice. Jen was telling us about her latest ‘perfect man’ – who will likely be discarded before our next get-together! And Nancy showed us photos of her kids. She’s getting back into photography, just on Saturdays for now, in a portrait studio. But she has plans to do more as soon as both children are in grade school. I’m thrilled for her!”

Vincent noted her shining eyes and the big smile on her face. “You are happy.” It was stated with the certainty that only someone who shared a Bond with her could have.

She tilted her head and regarded him. “I am…now that I’m back home with you.” She hugged him again before turning, and they moved from the vestibule to the interior of their brownstone.

Catherine toed off her heels. “Ahhh, that’s better.” She peeled off her overcoat and hung it in the front closet. Vincent picked up her shoes and followed her.

“Want to join me in the bedroom while I change?” she asked. “I can tell you about the movie.”

He nodded and followed her upstairs to the large bedroom they had made their own on the top floor of the brownstone. With a skylight and stained glass windows, it was a glorious amalgam of Above and Below, shot through with magical fingers of color that shifted as the sun traversed the sky, each moment of daylight slightly different than the last.

Vincent placed her discarded shoes in the closet and moved to a tapestry-covered armchair near their king-size bed. He sat, looking every inch the regal lord of the manor in his Tunnel finery.

Catherine eyed him appreciatively. “Play rehearsal today, I take it?”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t be wearing my Winterfest outfit for anything less than King Claudius.”

“It was casting against type for you to play the villain,” she noted.

“We try to shake things up from time to time. The expected can be boring.”

She smiled. “I don’t know about that.” She raked her gaze from his face to his toes, lingering around his mid-section, then back to his face. “What I’ve come to…expect…from you is the furthest thing from boring.”

That drew a chuckle from him. “Touché.” The blush that rose to his face was deep enough that it showed even through the colorful light from the stained glass surrounding them.

Catherine proceeded to remove the slacks and blouse she had worn to meet her friends. She went to the closet to hang her clothes. As she did, she hummed a tune Vincent was unfamiliar with.

“What is that?” he asked.

“The theme song of the movie we saw – Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. I’ve been hearing it on the radio when I cab to the office. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Catherine was down to her underwear as she sauntered back to the foot of the bed. Vincent was finding it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying, but he managed to nod.

She noticed his consternation and smiled again. As she slipped out of her underthings, she tilted her head and said, “Come here, I have something to tell you.”

He rose from his chair and crossed the room quickly, his desire to touch her bare flesh nearly overwhelming. She stood waiting for him, head back and eyelids lowered. As he moved to wrap her in his arms, she put her palms against his chest, stopping him. When her mouth opened, he was surprised to hear a breathy repeat of the tune she’d been humming, this time with words.

“Look into my eyes…” she crooned.

He obeyed, wanting to drown in the look of love he always found there.

“…you will see what you mean to me…”

He did. He always did. Her love for him was never more apparent than in these intimate moments when she bared not just her body but her soul to him.

“Search your heart, search your soul…” Her eyelids fluttered closed and she moved into his arms. In a husky whisper, she continued, “And when you find me there, you’ll search no more…”

She stopped singing then, and he covered her mouth with his, to kiss his reply to her…

Lovemaking in their own bed, far from interruptions and the demands of their busy lives, was still a marvel to them both. For so long they had loved only within their hearts, barely doing more than embracing, but finally…gloriously…and after much too long…the walls had fallen, and they had entered into a new chapter of the book of their lives. Yet even though nearly a year had passed, each time they came together, it still felt so new. Words were not needed, only touch, only the yearning of two bodies becoming one.

As they lay together, Vincent’s clothes strewn with abandon upon the carpet around the bed, their breathing finally returning to normal, Catherine rose on an elbow and gazed down into the beloved face beneath hers. Again her voice took on a cadence, and softly she half-sang, half-murmured, “Don’t tell me it’s not worth trying for…You can’t tell me it’s not worth dying for…”

She kissed his unique lips again, languidly, then covered his face from chin to forehead in feather-light touches of her mouth. Her voice came out even huskier as she sang in a voice barely above a whisper, “Look into your heart. You will find there’s nothing there to hide.” She nuzzled under the hair at his temple until she found his ear, licking it and blowing softly, the feel of her hot breath making him moan even as his body was rising to the urgings of her roaming hand.

“Take me as I am…” she crooned. “Take my life. I would give it all.” She melted into his arms then and found herself turned onto her back with him hovering above her. “I would…sacrifice…”

He smothered the next words with his mouth pressed to hers, and for long, delirious minutes words were once more unnecessary.

Panting, perspiring, and inordinately pleased with the outcome of her seduction, Catherine burrowed against Vincent’s side, her lips near his ear. She hummed a bit more of the tune before uttering the next words of the song in a low voice. “There’s no love like your love.” As she traced a path with her fingers from his sternum down to his waist, she added, “And no other could give more love…”

His body responded. He found he did have more love yet to give, which Catherine gratefully received. And after they had made love yet again, she smiled sleepily and whispered, “There’s nowhere unless you’re there…”

There was more to the song, but before she could finish it, they fell asleep in each other’s arms…for words didn’t matter, they never had, not between them.

________

(Everything I Do) I Do It For You by Robert John Lange, Bryan Adams, and Michael Arnold Kamen, 1991.