Lost in Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

sleepily sated
smile.
    ‘I’m not the only one. I’ve never known a woman who could enjoy
intimacy with such relish.’
    Errin blushed. ‘You mean I was too...’
    ‘You were perfect,’ Richard said, marvelling at the way bliss
engendered such easy frankness.
    ‘I didn’t know it could be like this.’
    ‘I know.’ And he believed her. He was not her first, but it
felt as if he was. No one had done to her what he had done. No one had made him
feel what she had made him feel. ‘I know,’ Richard repeated uneasily. Because
what would happen now?
    Errin seemed to sense his change of mood, for she sat up and
reached for her underwear, pulling it on hastily, followed too quickly by the
rest of her clothing.
    Richard too sat up and began to dress, his elation settling
into something more sombre as reality reasserted itself. ‘We’ve been pretending
that this situation is normal, but it’s not. We can’t keep ignoring...’
    ‘The elephant in the room.’
    ‘I’m not even going to ask,’ Richard said, his expression one
of sheer bafflement. ‘You claim you got here by sitting in my armchair, but
that’s preposterous.’
    ‘I know, but it’s also true.’
    ‘And completely illogical, not to say scientifically
impossible.’
    ‘I know that too.’ Errin pulled on her boots and fastened her
jacket. ‘But it’s what happened all the same. You said you believed me.’
    ‘I know, but I realise now I was carried away by the
strangeness of the situation. As a man of science, I should have known it was
not sufficient simply to eliminate other possibilities. Without evidence, such
an explanation can only be surmise, not proof.’
    ‘Fine. Then I’ll prove it to you.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I’ll repeat the experiment, of course.’ Without giving herself
time to think about it, Errin flung herself into the wingback chair. Nothing
happened for a few seconds, long enough for her to begin to panic. What if she
couldn’t get back? And if she did—she didn’t want it to end like this, on a sour
note without time for goodbyes. ‘Richard,’ she said, ‘can’t we just...?’
    But it was too late. The chair enveloped her. She couldn’t get
up. Her eyes were forced closed. When she finally got them open again he was
gone, and she was back in Pandora’s Box, and her watch showed her that only
about a minute had elapsed.
    Maybe it had been a dream after all? And maybe, Errin thought
sadly, that was for the best, for where did the alternative leave her? Bemused
and confused, she left the shop and headed back to her hotel, where, after a
long soak in a piping-hot bath, jet lag caught up with her. She fell onto the
wide white bed of her air-conditioned room with its soft Egyptian-cotton sheets
and slept.
    * * *
    Richard stared at the empty chair in complete disbelief.
One minute she was there, the next she was gone. He could swear he had not
closed his eyes, but he must have, for he had not seen her leave. He rushed to
the door and called to his footman, demanding to know if Errin had left that
way, but she had not, nor had she gone through the baize door to the servants’
quarters, nor ascended the stairs, nor ducked into any one of the other
downstairs rooms. She had vanished into thin air.
    Richard returned to the library and stared at the wingback
chair. He sat in it and wished for her to return. Feeling foolish, he closed his
eyes and wished for her again, but nothing happened.
    Her absence seemed to mock him. The room was redolent of her
presence. He thought he could smell her citrusy scent on the tooled leather of
the chair. She was certainly there, the tantalising trace of her sex, on his
fingers. She was no illusion. She was the most real person he had ever
encountered. And now she was gone.
    Slowly, it dawned on him that he had missed the opportunity of
a lifetime for a student of science like himself. The chance to quite literally
see into the future. All the wondrous things she could have told