Beautiful Agony (A Tale Of Savage Love, Part I) Read Online Free PDF Page A

but look at him.  So look, I did.  Instantly, the spit shriveled in my mouth.
    The man, himself, was uniquely interesting; just certainly not “handsome” in the usual sense of the word.  He was well built , had short-cropped dark hair, and what looked to be nearly colorless, crystal-gray eyes.  They were so startling they made me uncomfortable just by the merits of him looking out at me via the pixelated surface of the digital photo, alone.  How would I feel, then, when I was pinned and wriggling beneath his gaze for real?
    His jaw was very square, his cheeks angular, his nose long with a slight hook at the bridge, and his overall expression was blandly menacing, in a way I couldn’t quite pinpoint.  Yet what caught my attention first and foremost was the large sc ar that ran from the very top of his left cheek, all the way down across the curve , finally ending at his upper lip where it clearly cleaved the surface.  What had happened to him to mar him so badly?
    I was transfixed by it, hypnotized, mesmerized.  I simply couldn’t tear my eyes away.  It was a n absolutely flawless illustration of what I’d longed for all these years:  something external, something that marked me , something that showed others how damaged I was inside.  Perhaps if I’d had similar scars to bear on my body , I wouldn’t have ended up with quite so many upon my soul .
    I studied that garishly-beautiful blemish for a long, long time.  I imagined that for most people, they, too, also first saw the scar ; the raised, puffy welt, so starkly brutal it was like a jag of lightning right across his face.  Of course they would be engrossed by it for an entirely different reason – perhaps reacting with curios ity, revulsion, or even disgust.  Me, on the other hand, I looked at it with only envy instead .
    The scar was quite startling; vivid white, which was particularly discordant against the backdrop of his otherwise deeply- tanned skin.  I questioned for a moment why he’d sent this angle of himself, and not a more flattering one where I couldn’t see so much of his scar.  But then again, perhaps when you had such a central disfigurement, right on your face where it was the first thing that any pe rson who met you would ever see, it was easier to get it out of the way up front.
    Personally, the scar didn’ t bother me at all (certainly not like his eyes did) .  You see, I found it a lot less threatening when people’s damage was easily vis ible, rather than buried deep inside , like mine.  I did wonder , though, how in the hell he’d actually gotten it.
    As far as the rest of him went, h e appeared tall, and lithely muscular.  He certainly wasn’t a body-builder type, but he did have a well-defined and toned chest beneath his black t-shirt, and his arms looked like they were corded with languid steel.  His was a runner’s body; someone who could go long distances, push himself to the ends of the earth and beyond, and yet never even get the slightest bit winded.  Looking at him excited me in some un-nameable, irrefutable way.
    Maybe it was stupid, but something inside suddenly made me want to go along with exactly what he’d asked.  At least p artially.  Everyone in the biz knew me as Ruby Sweet.  So, I figured there was no harm in using my middle name for now.  Once we’d actually met and if I decided to continue this venture further, then I would tell him my first name.
    Cropping just a head-shot of myself out from a photo of the most recent office-party mêlée (that a colleague had fortuitously posted on Facebook) , I saved it and named it “ Evelyn Sweet, 212-555-8686 ” .   Then I attached it to my return email.
    The number happened to correlate to an anonymous, “ pay-as-you go ” cell, and it was not registered to me in any official database.  Any woman dating in this day an d age, really needed to have just such a thing when giving out her number to random strangers.  Because face it, even if you