If at First Read Online Free PDF Page B

relished them, Eleanor shook loose any lingering restraint. Greg laughed in delight as she let her enthusiasm run riot, and told her how she could repay him.
    When he asked, she rose up in the way he loved, poised above him, light from the slumbering bonfire licking at her flesh, deepening her mystique. His hands finally found her breasts. She grinned, seeing his weakness, and played on it, drawing out the poignancy before she twined her legs around him, and pulled herself down. Her mind became almost dazzlingly bright as sheused him to bring herself to orgasm, all coherency overwhelmed by animal instinct.
    Greg let go of Edwards and duty and guilt, and concentrated solely on inflaming Eleanor still further.

2
    Julia Evans sat at the dresser in her bedroom while the maid brushed daytime knots out of her long chestnut hair. It had to be done every night; she hadn’t allowed her hair to be cut for years, and now it hung almost down to her waist. Her best feature, everyone said, striking.
    She studied her face in the mirror, plump cheeked and bland, wearing a slightly sorrowful expression. It wasn’t an ugly face, by any means. But at seventeen some allure really ought to be evolving.
    Access Vanity#Twelve , she told her bioware processor implant silently. At least she had had a sense of humour when she began this memory sequence.
    A mirage of her own face, six months younger, unfurled behind her eyes. She compared it to the one in the mirror. There was some change. A burning-off of puppy fat, her cheeks were rounder then. Fractionally.
    There had been a time, a couple of months back, when she’d considered
plastique
, but eventually shied away. Having herself altered to match some channel-starlet ideal would be the ultimate admission of defeat. As long as there was still some development there was hope. Perhaps she was being impatient. But how wonderful it would be to make the boys ogle lustily.
    Commit Vanity#Twenty-five . The mirror image, with all its melancholia.
    ‘Thank you, Adela,’ she said.
    The maid nodded primly, and made one final stroke with the brush before departing, Julia watched her go in the mirror, some deep instinct objecting to ordering people around like cattle. But it was an instinct which was nearly dead, the Swiss boarding school had seen to that. Besides, Adela wasn’t one of the grudging ones. At twenty-two years of age she was close enough in years for Julia to feel comfortable with her; and she was certainly loyal enough – to the extent of sharing Wilholm Manor’s considerable quantity of below-stairs gossip.
    Julia shrugged out of her robe and flopped down on the big circular bed, stretching luxuriously on the apricot silk sheets. The room was huge, so much empty space, and all her own. So very different to the little stone burrow she’d lived in for the first ten years of her life at the First Salvation Church warren. Space was undoubtedly the best part of being rich.
    The bedroom was a celebration of opulent decadence, with its satin rose ceiling, thick pile carpet, walk-through wardrobes, a marbled bathroom. It was a feminine room; a
boudoir
, foreign and exotic.
    She’d spent a fortnight with an increasingly harried interior designer selecting exactly the style she wanted. A distant memory of an old memox video-cartridge, a costume romance of handsome dukes and willowy heroines in a more genteel age.
    Her grandfather had come in when the bedroom was finished, his eyes rolling with bemused tolerance. ‘Well, as long as
you’re
happy with it, Juliet.’
    He hadn’t paid many visits after that. Not that she minded him. But it was delicious to be left alone, privacy still seemed a bit of a novelty. Her security hardline bodyguards accompanied her everywhere outside the mansion; not nudging her shoulder, they were too professional for that, but always close, always watching. And once inside Wilholm’s ’ware-saturated perimeter nothing went unseen.
    Some part of Julia’s nature