Free A Rage to Live by Roberta Latow Page A

man enthralled with a woman he wanted a sexual adventure with. She was a woman who wanted him, and nothing more than to die to the world with him in sexual bliss.
    And she had, they both had, many times, during their several hours together. She could not explain to herself, nor did she want to, the enormous sense of love she was feeling for him, a completeness in herself, how great it was to be alive. She felt life pulsating – no, more like pounding – through her, all around her; more profound, more rich than she could ever have imagined.
    Cressida had been unable to hold back her many orgasms. She had ridden out on them into hours of uncontrollable lust and pleasure with Kane. What joy, what bliss, unimaginable happiness. But his words, those last words to her?
    She wanted to reach out and touch him, tell him again, as she had so many times during their hours of heated passion and their careening towards sexual overdrive, ‘I still love you, I never realised how much, my love, my life.’ But now there was hesitation where there had been none: no will, no need, to hold back. She believed his words, that he meant every one of them. Only this time she was older, wiser, and no longer took words and sentiments as promises. For Cressida Vine, only actions spoke true.
    She closed her eyes for a moment, using them like a camera to snap and store his picture. She would carry it in her mind to look at foralways, as others might glue it in a scrapbook and gaze on it as a memory. She remained where she was, as she was, looking at him for several more minutes, revelling in the joy and wonderment of two people in love. One minute, hours, a day, a lifetime, it didn’t matter. Just to be there even once, as she had been with Kane, was everything.
    Very cautiously, she eased herself away from him and rose from the cushions they had been lying on on the floor. Gazing down at him, she placed her hands together as if in prayer and put them over her mouth and nose, her thumbs under the chin. A strange gesture, a contemplative one. She inhaled deeply and held her breath. She caught the scent of his body, the sweet scent of sex and come, and held it for as long as she could. It was dizzying and divine, and she was made suddenly aware of the taste of him still in her mouth, of how he had filled her with his orgasms and how she still carried his seed within her. She had it all. All she had ever wanted. She had returned to New Cobham less than twenty-four hours before, and had found it still to be her place of happiness, what she had yearned for. Profound contentment, all her ghosts laid to rest.
    Hollihocks. It had to be eight o’clock or after, Hollihocks was hers. She quietly went about the room and then the terrace picking up her dress and shoes. Hastily she dressed, hitching up her skirt as she had before when she had started out on her magnificent odyssey.
    On the long flight of wooden stairs down to the beach she found Kane’s briefcase, a large, old-fashioned leather case stuffed full of music scores. She thought of him carefully leaving it there and stealing up the stairs to confront a burglar. It brought a smile to her lips. She turned round and looked up the staircase, half hoping he would be standing there. He wasn’t. She walked around the briefcase and continued down the stairs.
    The sun felt good, even the sand was warm under her feet. She began to run towards Hollihocks, but stopped about two hundred yards from the house. There were several flowering bushes, unusual ones she could not identify but thought might belong to the Mountain Laurel family. She carefully broke off several branches of shiny dark green leaves topped by clusters of white blossoms and ran to the beach house with them. She inched her way quietly up the stairs, through the vast living-room, to lay them down on the cushions next to the still sleeping Kane.
    On the beach again, she once more headed for home. She half ran, half walked the distance, and felt