The man he used to be

Mercedes was astonished, as she let her fingers run over his tanned skin. He was still the lean and strong man she had known. His muscles were now more defined though. There was nothing boyish left in his looks.  He looked and felt so different and yet so familiar to her. Slowly she began to open the remaining buttons on his shirt. Her hands were trembling. She could see his chest move with the quick panting breaths he drew. She was nervous. He as well. She could see it in the way he shivered occasionally or this light flicker in his eyes. A familiar sight. As she shoved the shirt down his chest his skin glistened in the dim candle light. It was the first time she noticed those scars on his skin. She drew a sharp breath. There was a number burnt into his flesh, into his chest. 034. Carefully she touched it, her fingers shivering. He closed his eyes. He had been marked. Marked forever as a prisoner. Her fingers rubbed over the old scar as if she could erase it with her touch. He smiled lightly. She could not erase these marks they had given him – but she erased the marks on his soul. With every touch, every single kiss, every loving word, he felt the memories fade away.

She shivered again and drew him closer to her, arms and legs wrapping around his slim body. She as well was hungry for love – his love. The only love she had ever felt. Fernand was no loving husband – he not even tried to be. He had wanted to possess her, nothing more. He had wanted the one thing he could not have – her. He envied Edmond. He was jealous and spun a fabulous web of lies to take him away from her. One thing he had not thought of though:  even if her beloved Edmond was away, dead as she believed, Fernand never got her. She never opened up to him, never bared her soul.

“Mercedes.” This one word brought her back to reality and made every hateful thought of Fernand disappear like smoke. Edmond, her Edmond, was tenderly watching her. His hands carefully reaching out to caress her. It was only then that she noticed that he had finished undressing her with skillful hands. As if pulled by a strange force her arms wrapped around his neck again and their lips met for another breathtaking kiss. While one of her hands caressed his neck and shoulders, the other fumbled with the remains of his clothes – getting assistance from him.

He sighed deep in his throat and threw his head back. None of the girls he had been with ever made him feel this way. Yes, you could buy women like goods on the street – but it was not the same. Their affection was bought. Their feelings just an act. They only loved the fact they got paid. It was anonymous. Impersonal. Bar of any emotion. But tonight was the complete opposite. Tonight he felt more than ever before.

Mercedes hardly noticed, how his body pressed her back into the blankets and cushions on the ground. His lips were devouring her, like she was his water, his essence of life. He was hers definitely. She clung to him asking herself how she could have been so blind, how she could have let him go. He was her life. He had been all these years. She had been alive because she never let go of hope.

“I dreamt of this… it kept me alive in hell.” He whispered and closed his eyes while he caressed her soft body with his fingertips. Shiver after shiver ran down her spine as she felt his bare skin on her own, his sweet but ragged breath, his dark voice. Every kiss of him, every little caress erased the awful memories she had of this act. Her eyes closed in pure bliss, but she forced them open again. She wanted to see his face – his blue eyes that gazed at her in sheer amazement and wonder while he brought her pleasures she never knew one could feel – or which she had felt long ago. In another time, another life.

He stared deep into her blue pools that so reminded him of the sea glistening in the sunlight, but the emotions were overwhelming. He closed his eyes and let the waves of passion crash over them like the worst and yet most beautiful storm he ever sailed through. When it was over he opened his eyes again and looked at her. She was smiling.

“I love you. I have always loved you.” She whispered and touched the side of his face now glistening with a thin film of sweat. He did not answer. He could not. His throat was tight with everything he felt. Words could not express this.

“Why did you come here?” he finally asked again and Mercedes sighed. “I needed to speak to you. To… tell you something. To ask something of you.” She mumbled lowly and averted her gaze. “What?” He touched her chin and forced her to look into his eyes again. What was she not telling him? What was her reason for coming her? “You will duel yourself with Albert tomorrow. I know he asked you to.” He nodded after a moment of hesitance. “You cannot do this. He is…”

“I know he is your son.” He cut her off, his voice suddenly sharp and cold again. “Is this why you came? You wanted to persuade me to let him go? Is this why…?” He made a quick gesture to the cushions and blankets surrounding them. “No!” Mercedes quickly grabbed his arm as he sat up and looked for his clothes.

“I will not be used again.” He straightened up, staring down at her. The coldness had returned to her eyes. He was buttoning his shirt, ready to leave, the epee ready in his hand. “I will not be played again – not by anyone and surely not by you.” He took his coat and moved swiftly towards the door.

“Are you so cold? So hard-hearted that you would kill him – your son?” He stopped and it was as if his heart stumbled. He turned around. His brain was still processing the words she had spoken. “My…?”

“Can’t you see it? He has your eyes. He looks like you. He was the only reason I did not kill myself – because you were alive. You were alive in him! Every day I looked at him, I saw the man you were.” She cried and tears now streamed freely down her face. He kneeled next to her again, wiping the tears away. “But…?” He did not need to ask. She had come here to tell him the full story.

“I don’t know if you remember our night by…” “Of course I do.” He cut her off. “I was waiting for you after they took you away. Every day and night. I felt sick and I thought it was the worry, the fear. But it was not. I was all alone. Fernand was there and he knew. He knew and he was ready to accept it and overlook it. He saved me from the shame, the rumours and I was eternally grateful. But I believed you were dead! I only agreed to this marriage because I had no choice! I was all alone, you were not there and no matter how much I wished you would be, you were not coming back – at least that is what I was told!” she stammered and he lowered his head, just then realizing what he had done to her.

“If I had known…” “I know. It was not your fault. We were tricked.” She soothed him and caressed his cheek again. “I will not go back to him. Never Edmond. I never loved him – I love you.” “And I will make sure we can be together. I will not let this go.” She shook her head. “No, please. Don’t be like him… Let us go somewhere, far away. Leave Paris and go back to Marseilles maybe? Don’t ruin your live for someone like him.” He turned his gaze away from her and sighed. The moment he needed to nod felt like eternity and when he looked up she looked at the young man she had loved again. The wrath was gone – the desire for revenge. He was Edmond again – her Edmond.

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