Free Anew: Book One: Awakened by Josie Litton Page B

to
mention beautiful, passionate, incredibly responsive… My groin tightens. I
ignore it and keep up the hard, relentless rhythm.
    Don’t give her any reason to
run.
    At least not any more reason
than I’ve already done.
    Thud! Thud! Thudthudthudthud!
    Finally, I’ve had enough.
Stripping off the gloves, I head for the shower. The down rush of ice cold
water helps. So do fresh clothes and a shave. I feel marginally more in control
of myself as I return to the library intending to take refuge in work. The strands
of Debussy’s Reverie coming from the music room stop me.
    For a moment, I’m catapulted
back in time. The piece was one of Susannah’s favorites. She played it often.
But it isn’t Susannah sitting at the polished black grand piano in the
high-ceilinged music room flooded with late afternoon light.
    Amelia’s long, exquisite legs
extend beneath the hem of the short pleated black skirt she’s wearing with a
softly draped ivory silk blouse. I can’t help but be struck by her natural
elegance. She is the personification of a particular male fantasy to which I am
definitely not immune. A perfect lady in the drawing room, or in this case the
music room, and a perfect--not whore, she’s not remotely that--but a perfect
sexual partner behind closed doors.
    Inevitably, my body hardens yet
again. That’s getting to be my perpetual state whenever I’m around her. Oh,
hell, why not admit it? I don’t have to be anywhere near her. Just a stray
thought about her is enough to get me going.
    Her head is tilted to one side,
the fall of her chestnut hair partially obscuring her features. But I can see
that she looks pensive and somewhat sad as her fingers move over the keys. She
plays beautifully, imparting genuine feeling to the dreamlike piece. I have to
wonder why she isn’t enjoying it more.
    As though sensing my presence,
she looks up. Her cheeks flush softly, affording me a small measure of
satisfaction. She may reject certain aspects of our relationship but she isn’t
by any means immune to the intensity of whatever this is between us.
    “Don’t let me interrupt you,” I
say, walking farther into the airy, high-ceilinged room. “You play
beautifully.”
    She shakes her head. “Susannah
played beautifully, that’s obvious. I’m just some sort of recording.”
    Her bitterness is unmistakable
but beneath it I sense an undercurrent of fear. For all her insistence to the
contrary, she still harbors doubts about herself as an individual able to make
her own choices.
    I don’t question my sudden need
to comfort and reassure her. “Perhaps with that piece but what about with
another? Something that Susannah didn’t play?”
    She looks at me, her eyes filled
with need so stark that it makes the underused organ in my chest constrict.
“What are you saying?” she asks.
    I lean against the side of the
piano and study her. The tips of my fingers hold the memory of how it felt to
stroke her all over from the softness of her lips parting when I thrust my
thumb into her mouth and told her to suck to the hot, enticing wetness between
her legs that made me shake with the need to be inside her. I swear that I can
still hear her breathy moans, feel her arch under me, smell her arousal…
    Fucking her senseless should
have taken the edge off. Instead, all it’s done is make me want her more. I
grit my teeth against the sudden image of her spread out on the piano, that
silky little blouse ripped open, her skirt hitched up around her waist, my cock
thrusting into her.
    “You’re staring,” she says.
    Her blush deepens as she speaks,
drawing me up short. I have to hope that she’s still too innocent to have any
inkling of what’s going on in my head. I sure as hell don’t want her to know
how susceptible I am to her. After only one night in her bed, I’m up against
the stark reality that she effects me as no other woman has ever done.
    The differences between her and
Susannah are striking. Aside from the