Laurie King Anne Weverley 01 The Birth Of A New Moon

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Long hours crept by. The noises of dinner built up overhead, feet slow and
quick, heavy tread and the light patter of children. She found herself
salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs when the sounds paused for the evening
meal, and then the feet sounds resumed for the after-dinner chores. There was
another pause during evening meditation, a lesser buildup of noise when that
was finished, and finally all the noises faded away. The house quieted. Water,
hot or cold, did nothing to satisfy hunger. The muscles of her shoulders and
back burned in any position, and even the volumes of erotica lost their
ability to distract after the first half dozen. She found herself eyeing the
delicate Japanese pictures of couples (and more) coupling, wondering if the
pictures were printed on edible rice paper.
She hadn't heard a footstep overhead for at least half an hour, which put it
close to midnight, when a noise came from outside the door. Struggling stiffly
to pull herself upright from her nest of towels, she waited, her heart racing.
A single pair of heavy feet descended the wooden stairs; half a minute later a
key scraped in the lock. The door opened. Jonas stepped back, allowing her to
emerge.
His dark eyes studied her, looked in at the small room, and came back to her
face. "Did you enjoy my library?" he asked he:.
She gaped at him. "Did I ? Well, no, to tell you the truth. Not under the
circumstances. I didn't even have my reading glasses."
He nodded as if that were the only consideration, then asked, "Did you wash
yourself?"
"Not very well, but "
"That should do it, then."
"What?"
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Good night, Ana." He reached forward then, immobilized her head between his
powerful hands, and bent to kiss her mouth, briefly but with a thoroughness so
reminiscent of Aaron that it made Anne's scalp tingle. Before she could react,
before she knew whether the tingle was lust or revulsion, the bearded mouth
left hers. Then she felt his thick fingers enter the neck of her polo shirt to
draw out the buckskin pouch and pull it over her head.
He picked open the drawstring top with surprisingly delicate fingernails and
shook the contents onto the palm of his hand, turning them over curiously with
one thick finger. The bead, tufts of fur from the dogs, stones, and bee pollen
he funneled back into the pouch, but he took the silver crescent that she had
bought in Sedona between two fingers and turned it back and forth, watching
the light play across the low indentations of its beaten surface.
"The moon revels in the reflected glory of the sun," he mused. "In alchemical
allegory, Luna reaches the height of her existence in her conjoining with the
sun." He turned the pendant around again, and said, "Come."
She followed him reluctantly past the stairs that led to open air and back
into his study. He went over to the strange collection of bones and objects at
the third window, detached one item from the rest, and brought it back to her,
displayed on his palm, its leather cord dangling down the back of his hand. It
was the rough moon-shaped object she had noticed earlier, an elongated, worn
silver nugget threaded onto a thong. He smiled to himself, the same private
smile she had seen as he caressed the altarstone in the abbey ruins with his
fingertips, and then he curled the thong around the moon shape and pushed it
into the buckskin pouch and drew the bag shut.
"I'd like you to take that," he said. "It is& appropriate that you should
have it."
Anne studied him, and asked slowly, "Why? Whose necklace is that?"
"It belonged to Samantha Dooley, who is no longer with us," he told her. "She
did not, shall we say, live up to expectations."
Still smiling to himself, he tied the pouch snugly shut and dropped the cord
back around her neck. He tucked the medicine bag inside her shirt and then
tugged her collar up to hide it, a gesture that was somehow even more intimate
than the kiss he had given her. "You may wear it," he said.
And then he walked out of his study and disappeared through the door to the
laboratory.
Anne stood rubbing her hands across her mouth and scalp, trying to wipe away
the tingle, to scrub away the taste of Aaron that Jonas had left behind,
shocking, unexpected, and just too damn much, on top of everything else. She
felt punch-drunk, and not only because of the painkillers she had swallowed.
The past few days had been one long, deep plunge into the terror of her past
ending with the abrupt euphoria of anticlimax, sleepless nights thinking she
was balanced precariously over a bottomless abyss, only to discover that it
was all a fake, constructed by tricksters and fed by her own dark imagination.
All in all, it was more than she could deal with. She felt like a
jigsaw-puzzle person scattered across the landscape, and she craved only to
have Maria Makepeace standing over her, gathering up the pieces one by one and
putting her together again. She wanted to go after Jonas and draw his mouth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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