Improper Pleasure. Charlotte Featherstone

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СКАЧАТЬ by that hand gliding over the shoulder and waist of the statue. It was as if he could feel that same hand caressing his naked flesh. And he burned. Christ, every inch of his flesh grew hot as he imagined Emmy’s white little fingers trailing along his body.

      Touch me that way, he wanted to say. Look at me that way._But he kept silent, and instead allowed himself to become mesmerized by the sight of Emmy’s gentle hands and imagining her soothing touch roaming along his aching, lonely body.

      “How forlorn she looks residing over this tangled patch of overgrown shrubbery and brambles. It is as though she has been utterly abandoned—sentenced to years of loneliness until she crumbles to dust. No one will remember her and her presence here. No one but me.”

      Reaching for Emmy’s hand, he covered it with his, watching with a sense of power how his large hand engulfed her little one. Never had his body been so hard with anticipation, with passion and simple seduction. Never had he felt a more visceral connection to a woman. It was more than lust that drew him to her.

      “From the moment I first glimpsed her through the brush she captured my heart. She has been left all alone, abandoned to this beautiful but lonely spot.”

      Had Emmy been abandoned? Left alone in the world by a husband taken too soon, or a man who no longer cared for her? He experienced a mad, almost desperate urge to ask her, but then she spoke, her voice so quiet and without artifice.

      “It is her face, I think, that draws me. It is veiled and concealed from us, yet one can imagine what she looks like beneath the veil and her crown of blossoms.”

      He stepped closer to her so that his coat caressed her cloak and the toe of his boots touched the tips of her half boots. “What is the purpose of the veil, do you think?”

      “I know little of art.” She smiled tremulously and lowered her head, as if she were ashamed of that admission. He tipped her face up and brushed the pad of his thumb along her cheek as he looked through the lace to the blue of her eyes.

      “You needn’t know anything of art to appreciate it, Emmy. You only need to feel it and experience the emotion the work gives you.”

      “Perhaps the sculptor thought her too beautiful to be standing in such a sorrowful place. Perhaps the veil is there so we do not see her lack of beauty, so that we look beyond the physical and into the heart of her, so that we may take the time to know her as something more than a physical beauty. What do you see in her?”

      “Sadness. Loneliness. Need.” He was not looking at the statue, but at Emmy, her shrouded face showing those very same things. “She needs to be understood and loved by a man who would protect her. A man who could pleasure her. A man who would guard her secrets and not allow her to crumble to dust.”

      A faint smile broke from her lips and she lowered her head to study her hands which were clasped before her. He tipped her chin up once again, wishing he could lift the veil from her face to see just how beautiful Emmy truly was. For he knew she was. She had eyes a man could drown in. Lips made to be kissed for hours and designed to provide immense pleasure to a man. Her skin was the sort men wanted to touch over and over, and each time he would marvel at the softness, the suppleness, the astonishing purity of it.

      She looked at the statue once again. “Because thou has the power and own’st the grace to look through and behind this mask of me, and behold my soul’s true face. The words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

      He pressed closer, felt her sway ever so slightly into him. He wanted to touch her. To feel her beneath his hands before she melted into the gray fog, leaving him alone, frustrated, yearning to see her once again.

      “Emmy, you cannot know what you do to me with your honesty. It empowers me,” he said, unable to control his thoughts. “I can’t explain it. You give me such strength. Somehow you have been able to reach deep within me and touch the man. It is more than a physical attraction between us. It is something I have never before experienced. Something powerful and beautiful—”

      “Sssh, don’t say it,” she begged, pressing her cold fingertips atop his lips. “Words are so very difficult to take back and forget. Memories fade with time, but words never do. They linger in our minds, our hearts, haunting us. Right now, silence and memories would serve us much better.”

      “What I feel right now defies words, Emmy. I have never felt so vehemently about anything, as I do about you.” She swayed again and he gripped her arms, holding her tight.

      “You must release me,” she said in a breathless sob. “You must. You don’t understand. I am not who you think I am.”

      “Are you a widow, lonely for your husband? A scorned woman, searching for a man to make it right? Tell me who you are, Emmy. I want to know. I must know.”

      “I am nobody.”

      “No, you are not. When I close my eyes all I can see is you. Even now I can smell you, almost taste you…Christ, how I want you, Emmy.”

      Amelia allowed herself to sag against the hard breadth of Adrian’s chest. The inner struggling, the war waging so deep inside her was almost over. Today she would go against everything she had ever believed—would toss aside every fear she had ever clung to. Today, she would allow Adrian to take her on a journey he had begun and only he could complete.

      Only Adrian made her feel this way; like a woman in every sense of the word. In this little copse she was nearly his equal in mind and beauty. In station and wealth. Here in this little spot she was simply Emmy, and he Adrian. Nothing of their lives outside of this spot intruded.

      Droplets of cold rain began to fall from the sky and Adrian reached for her hand, pulling her so that she was running behind him as he steered them toward the secluded alcove, where there was a roof of carved stones and pillars that resembled obelisks. They would be dry. It would be dark. And they would be utterly alone as the rain fell down around them.

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