The Affair: Week 6 Read Online Free PDF Page A

confusion.
    “Did you return the ones you bought me and buy
different
ones?” she asked.
    “No. These are yours. Bequeathed to you by Cristina.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Apparently, she contacted her lawyer in the last days before she died and altered her will, leaving you her entire wardrobe, shoes, accessories . . . everything. It’s no small thing,” Vanni said, his lips tilting in dark amusement. “Cristina was a real clothes hound, and was often named one of the best-dressed women on the planet. Most of these dresses have never even been worn.”
    “She and I did discuss her love of fashion,” Emma said numbly, her mind trying to make sense of what Vanni was saying. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Part of her was stunned, part of her deeply moved by Cristina’s gesture. “She and I talked about her shop and she actually . . .”
    “What?” Vanni asked when she faded off.
    “She said she wanted me to have all her clothes. I didn’t take her seriously, though. I only knew her for a little over a week.”
    “I told you she liked you,” he said quietly.
    His eyes looked shrouded in the dim light of the closet, but she saw the glint in them as he stared at her. Emma touched the dresses in a mixture of awe and sadness. “I probably shouldn’t accept them . . . but I will,” she said with breathless resolution. Cristina had wanted her to have them, for whatever reason. Emma thought enough of her not to refuse such a lavish, thoughtful gift. Cristina hadn’t done it randomly, she just knew that somehow.
    “It was a very personal gift,” Vanni said.
    “I know. Clothes meant so much to her,” Emma agreed in a hushed tone.
    She looked over her shoulder and met his stare, seeing the hunger gleaming in his eyes as he watched her. Her pulse began to leap at her throat.
    “Come here,” he said.
    She swallowed, a thread in his tone making her skin prickle with awareness. Something caught her attention to the left of him as she walked into his arms.
    “Oh my,” she mumbled, craning to see what hung on the wall behind him. A rush of excitement went through her, hot and forbidden, something akin to what she’d felt that night in the armoire, but this time more intense.
    “You know I always feel like you’re out of my reach,” he said quietly, ignoring her anxious staring over his shoulder.
    She looked up at him slowly when he caught her chin, her fingers clutching instinctively on his hard, muscular biceps. “I’m right here,” she whispered.
    “Yes. But you deprived me of your presence for four days,” he said, a hard glimmer of challenge and dark amusement in his eyes. An electrical shiver ran through her. “So I’m going to give you a little punishment.”
    “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, giving him a glare for good measure.
    “That’s not what this is about. It would give me pleasure to have you at my mercy. I need it, after what you did. I believe it will give you excitement and pleasure as well. That’s all. Now I want you to go and choose one,” he hitched his chin in the direction behind him, and Emma knew very well he’d known exactly what she was looking at the whole time.
    She again looked past him. There was a built-in chest of drawers, but above, instruments of sexy punishment were hanging on the wall. She saw several leather floggers and what appeared to be a riding crop. There were several sizes of paddles—long and thin, medium and wide, short and round.
    The idea of being the one to choose her method of sexual punishment amplified the forbidden thrill of the dark room, Vanni’s hot eyes, and her own breathless excitement. She dropped her hands from his and walked past him, approaching the wall slowly. For a moment, she studied all the instruments, highly aware of his eyes on her backside. She fingered first one polished hardwood paddle and then a leather-covered one, then one with holes drilled into the wood, which looked like it