Free The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red by Ellen Rimbauer

and
    therefore slowly sank to my knees, my husband keeping us joined
    and fervently pursuing his climax, to where, in a dizzying
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    moment of unbridled sensation I tried to call out to him, only to
    hear my voice moan through indistinguishable syllables that he
    clearly took as a signal. We collapsed in a gasp of satisfaction, he
    on my back, me with my face pressed to the tile ?oor. “This is
    hardly a situation becoming of a lady,” I said weakly, winning a
    spontaneous eruption of laughter from the both of us.
    “Our morning ride,” he said, and we laughed again.
    When we were apart he rolled me over and we lay together
    again, half in, half out of our bedroom, half in, half out of consciousness,
    basking in the morning sunshine, basking in our
    union. I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist and heard
    myself say, “It’s all behind us, yes?”
    “I have hope it is.”
    “Never again.”
    “Never,” he said, gently touching my cheek. “I was a fool,
    Ellen.” And then the words I had prayed to hear. “Forgive me.”
    “We will not speak of it. Not now. Not ever.” From where this
    capitulation arose, I know not. Perhaps I wanted a marriage back.
    A life. Perhaps my con?dence in Sukeena’s enormous powers
    made John Rimbauer less of an obstacle and more of a game to
    me. I felt more the cat than the mouse. I had what he wanted:
    ability to deliver his heir. He had what I had quickly grown accustomed
    to: position, power and tremendous wealth.
    As we lay there, this forty-year-old man grew ardent yet again,
    and again I capitulated. And for the ?rst time since our marriage,
    I directed him as to the choreography of my pleasure. With each
    instruction I gave, I witnessed arousal in my husband, excitement.
    He would answer each touch I gave to him with a hearty,
    throaty, “Yes!” and do exactly as I wished. I tell you, Dear Diary: I
    never knew . . . I never knew. But under my careful instruction,
    both of the hips and the hands, he did pleasure me, carrying me
    to new sensations that both alarmed me (for my surrender to
    them) and overcame me with pure and perfect delight (my every
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    muscle on ?re at once!). My legs still gripped around him, I
    eased my damp head of hair back to resting, my chest a ?orid
    pink, my husband panting like a long-distance runner. “Good
    boy, Johnny,” I said, using a nickname I had never dared use
    before, adopting an attitude—as much a test as a conviction.
    He placed his head on my chest, and brie?y was that little boy
    I had complimented. I cannot explain in these pages, but in that
    moment the tide of our relating husband to wife did shift, wife to
    husband. I gained the strength and courage to express my physical
    desires, and in doing so somehow also gained the upper hand
    over my formerly de?ant husband. I didn’t want to think about
    the past, I wanted to command the future.
    As we dressed and took coffee on the balcony, I felt another
    stirring in my loins, and nearly requested my husband’s favors yet
    again. But this stirring was something altogether different from a
    woman’s urges. At ?rst I blamed this awful coffee and then, later,
    the excitement pent up from my morning discoveries and the
    accomplishment of one part of my dream.
    But then I blamed the act itself (or the acts, if one is counting!).
    For though I’d never experienced the condition ?rsthand,
    could only speculate on the sensation surging through my soul
    (not my body, but my soul), I sensed the presence of another life.
    A life within me. I was pregnant.
    I knew this absolutely and with all conviction. The ?rst ?edgling
    moments of a human being were growing inside me.
    When Sukeena saw me it was all but con?rmed. She met me in
    our rooms, looked deeply into my eyes and smiled widely. “So,”
    she said in her pidgin English, “it has begun.”
    Indeed, it has.
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    9 september 1908—paris, france
    I am cursed. Ever since our engagement to marry and the tragic
    murder at the site