Inamorata Read Online Free PDF Page A

I felt a cold little clutch of fear. No, it wasn’t too late. I would not fail again. Each time I had, the terror had stayed longer; it took more victims and more time to remake myself. How long would it take to survive it the next time? Or would I?
    I still had time. The three years mandated were not yet over. I had until the fifteenth of October to find him.
    But first I must release this one. I turned from the window. He looked up from pulling on his boots. He was shirtless still; when he straightened, the morning light brought out the red in the curls on his chest. “Tell me you want me to stay and I will,” he said urgently. “God knows I don’t want to leave.”
    “I thought you had an appointment.”
    “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going.” He strode over to me with an odd clopping gait, one boot on, the other foot bare. He pulled apart my dressing gown and buried his face in my breasts. I felt the rough stubble on his cheeks against my skin. “The only appointment I want to keep is with these,” he murmured, and suddenly I was overcome with weariness. I was so tired of this. A thousand times I’d taken men to bed. A thousand thousands. All to feed my hunger, all in search of that singular, momentary rapture that came when I made the choice, when the bargain was agreed to and sealed. I lived for that moment. But there was no reason to take this one to bed or let him touch me again. I raised my hands to push him away.
    But just then, he lifted his face. He looked ravaged, gaunt and restless, his blue eyes reddened, his pale skin ruddy. My hunger was tearing at him, and it raised a sadness and pity in me I could not suppress. I did not want to hurt him. I did not want to hurt any of them. But I always did.
    Let him go, Odilé. It’s better done now. He is not the one.
    “I’ll write odes to your breasts,” he said hoarsely. “Sonnets. Rondelets. I promise it.”
    “Or perhaps an elegy,” I suggested.
    “An elegy? God no! How could such exquisiteness inspire sorrow?”
    As gently as I could, I pushed him away. “Write whatever poems you wish. But you have an appointment, and you should not let me keep you from it.”
    “How can you stand to be away from me, when I cannot bear a moment apart from you?”
    I felt what was left of his talent feeding the harsh, hungry maw of my craving.
    “Why do you tremble?” he demanded. “Please, God, let it be from fear of losing me.”
    He had fallen to his knees. His arms encircled my hips. He pressed his face to me, kissing the curls between my legs. I must end it now. Swiftly, ruthlessly. I must be out hunting again before I lost control.
    But pity was my downfall, as always. A few more minutes before I set him loose—what harm could it do? I gripped his hair, tangling the soft honey of it in my fingers, pulling until he gasped—something he liked. He looked up, hopeful as a puppy pleading for scraps, eyes big and blue and heavily lashed. I liked his eyes best of all, I thought. Those, and his poetry. He had written so prettily.
    I let him crawl up me, a monkey on a tree. I let him press me to the wall. He lifted me, fumbling with his trousers even as I wrapped my legs around him. I let him pound me into the crumbling plaster wall as I grabbed for purchase, and as he moaned and panted into my throat, I felt my dark and ceaseless appetite sink its teeth into him and the bliss of momentary relief. It could not last, but oh it was something; it was sweet. He groaned with agony, collapsing even as he came, releasing me hard, falling to his knees, shaking with combined ecstasy and terror. He looked up at me.
    “God, I adore you,” he gasped. “What’s happening to me?”
    I knelt down, taking his cheek into my hand. He surged toward it, my very touch an addiction. I kissed his forehead softly. “You should have gone to your appointment.”
    I left him gasping in a ball of weakness on the floor, and called for Antonio to throw him out into the street.

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