“So you read this book, become aroused, and do nothing about it?”
I nod. “Usually.”
Her lips part, just a little.
“Mr. Saintsbury, I don’t think I have ever met a man so bent on tormenting himself. How did a man such as you come to acquire such a book?”
This part is even worse. I cannot bear it. I consider lying.
“Don’t lie,” she says as if reading my mind.
“I found it. In a bookstore. In London. Amongst the normal books. I was intrigued by the color of the cover—it is a lovely, uh, green. And so I took it from the shelf. It shouldn’t have been there.”
“And so you bought it?”
I close my eyes.
And hear her short, harsh laugh.
“No, of course not. You could not buy such a thing. You stole it.”
I felt such shame. And yet I did it anyway.
I meet her eye.
“Yes,” I finally say. “I took it.”
She smiles.
“Thank you for your honesty. Come here, Mr. Saintsbury. Let us discuss what you have learned in your little green book.”
Chapter 7
Annabelle
Ihave to admit it.
The man’s self-denial moves me.
And the story about his little book.
It makes me weak with desire.
It shouldn’t.
I know the ideas behind it are rotten. He deprives himself for nothing. In pleasing a God that doesn’t exist.
Nevertheless his self-denial fills me with unaccountable, terrible desire.
I shake my head, ridding it of the pathos I feel for the man before me.
I am not here to cure him of his terrible notions.
I am here to get what I want.
To slake my own lust and to obtain my heir.
“Come here. Now,” I repeat. “Or do you forget that you keep your post at my pleasure?”
