“It’s beautiful, Annabelle. It’s far too fine.”
“No. You deserve it.”
“Thank you,” he says. “I will use it.”
“You are very welcome. You promised to write me something after all. Now you will have no excuse.”
It surprises me, in fact, that he hasn’t done so yet.
He smiles sheepishly. “Well, I have been working at something—when you go to the counting house. But I am not sure if it is—if anyone else will see the value in it. I am not confident in my writing.”
“May I read it?”
He nods and walks to a side table. He pulls out a sheaf of papers from beneath the books and hands it to me.
I begin to read.
I stand before her chair, completely at her mercy.
“Does your little green book explain how a man can please a woman with his mouth?”
I close my eyes. It is humiliating that she knows that I have such a book, that I read it, that I sit there hard and aching before it but unable to sate myself.
“Yes.”
“So then you know of what I speak. I will teach you how to do it. But first, I want you to see me bare. Have you ever seen a woman bare?”
“No,” I gasp, too hot with anticipation to even feel embarrassment at yet another lowering confession.
“You won’t touch me until I tell you. And you won’t frig yourself, do you understand?”
My head bobs. The truth is that I’ll do whatever she says. Whatever keeps me here in front of her. Whatever will allow me to see her bare.
She bares herself to me then. And every fiber of my being yearns towards her. She is everything that I have ever allowed myself to desire in a woman—and yet more. She is my tormenter—and yet an angel.
Her breasts and core in particular attract my gaze. And if it weren’t for the fact that I need to drink in the beauty of her face too, I would never be able to stop looking at that dual bounty.
I am in agony. I wish, with everything in me, that I could spend.
My gaze meets hers.
“God help me,” I curse.
“There is no God here, Mr. Saintsbury. Tell me. Do you plan to marry one day?”
“Yes.”
“What I am about to teach you, your future wife will appreciate immensely.”
I stop reading, even though there is more.
My mouth falls open.
“It is us.”
“Yes,” he says nervously.
I imagined it would be some tawdry sort of fantasy—a story about a barmaid and a lonely traveler, that kind of thing.
