Four Temptations Read Online Free PDF Page A

doubt.
    “You going to tell Porter?”
    “You want me to?” he asked.
    It was my turn to shrug.
    “So this is just revenge, is it?” he said. “That all?”
    “We’re grown-ups,” I said, all I could come up with to say to him, no longer even sure what I meant by it.
    What more could it have been than that? A moment of passion, a complex stew of revenge and need and liberation.
    I was fragile, broken, caught on the rebound. That was all it could be.
    “What if I was to say it was more than that?” he said.
    Those eyes. Those piercing, pale blue eyes. They wouldn’t leave me alone. Wouldn’t let me hide behind my platitudes and easy answers.
    “What if I was to say that I’ve wanted you for the longest time? That ever since Porter first introduced us I’ve longed for you, and only ever stopped because he’s Porter and how could I do anything that would hurt him? Because you’re gorgeous and how could you ever see anything in me? That I’d even stoop so low as to take advantage of you on a night when you’re vulnerable because I’ve dreamed about you for years? That I’ve never had a relationship that worked because – always – no one else measures up when compared with you? What if I was to say all that, in a long, embarrassing, gush, as if those words have been waiting to spill out for years and–”
    I silenced him, briefly, with a finger to his lips.
    Then: “Didn’t you know ?”
    Does knowing have to be a conscious thing? Or can it be there in how you respond when the situation arises? Would I ever have done this thing with him if a part of me hadn’t always known? Maybe I’d blanked it out, maybe my mind had protected me, but when the time was right it was as if I had known all along.
    “Listen,” he said. “I’ll go. I’ve said too much. I’ve spoilt it. I’ll–”
    This time I silenced him with my mouth, my lips sealing his closed, and then my  tongue, tenderly prizing them apart.
    I felt him respond against me, instantly.
    §
    I had never really seen Simon Darby in that way before. Or, at least, I had never quite put all the clues together, all the little signs. He was tall, slim, with strawberry blond hair and eyes that were a piercing pale blue. He was charming, funny, intelligent, and he had the kind of physique that good clothes just hung off, as if they had been made for him to wear.
    Others saw him that way – he had never been short of female company, although, for some reason, they never seemed to stick around for long. It was as if he fended them off, distanced himself from them; as if there had always been something else occupying that space in his life.
    Some one else.
    Me.
    I had never, consciously, thought about all of this.
    I had been blind.
    Or I had blinded myself.
    He was just Simon Darby.
    An old acquaintance, a part of the backdrop to my life.
    My husband’s best friend.
    My lover.
    Simon Darby.

Words of Love
    Maggie
    I really should have known better. I’d be the first to admit that.
    Doomed relationships? Volatile lovers who can never make things work together? So many fights the admittedly fantastic sex just isn’t enough in the end (although it takes the longest time to really be sure about that when the sex is so good)? Temptations that should really be ignored, because how could that particular relationship ever stand a chance?
    Tell me about it.
    I’ve been there, seen it all. Written the book and sold the movie.
    And maybe that’s the problem.
    §
    I’m Maggie Nolan and I write.
    I write novels based on the experiences of my friends and, predominantly, myself. Novels that leave no stone unturned. Just as the sex in my stories is explicit, so too is the scratching beneath the emotional skin. I try to tell it as it is.
    He’s Brandon Tyne and he writes, too.
    He writes for the New Yorker and Granta . He writes books about his travels, and about the food and drink he discovers along the way; he writes about the people he meets and fights with and