Dark Nights by Kitti Bernetti Read Free Book Online

sensations to Seb. 
    In his offices, she had been icy. When he had caught her stealing from him she had been fiery, everything about her said, “keep away”. But after he had possessed her, she was like some secret garden fenced off with iron railings which once the gate had been unlocked was soft and fragrant, dewy and feminine. The music floated upwards to them, they lay as if in their own secret tent. The rest of the world, the hundreds of people below didn’t matter. It felt to Seb as if he had waited a lifetime to feel this close to another human being and now he had a glimpse of what the rest of the world meant when they said that money couldn’t buy you happiness. They meant moments like this. The warmth, the closeness, the intimacy. He reached to the gold chain at her neck, a heart encasing a tiny diamond. ‘This is pretty, a gift from a lover?’ A pang hit him somewhere deep in his chest. Jealousy! Something he had never experienced before. It hurt.
    ‘No,’ she looked on it fondly, ‘From my sister, for my 18th birthday. She saved for a year to buy that. I wear it all the time; it’s my most treasured possession.’
    Seb let the light shine on it. ‘You’re lucky to have a sibling you care for. I had a brother, once. An elder brother.’
    ‘You had a brother, what do you mean?’
    ‘He was ten years older, and the complete opposite to me. He was artistic, a photographer. He went to all the exotic parts of the globe, shot the most amazing things; I still have a portfolio of his work. My father idolised him, the first born son and all that. He died in an accident in South America photographing in the jungle. My father never got over it. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I devote myself to business. I wanted to prove to my father I could be a success too. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body; my only talent has been in building businesses. It’s ironic though because my father has no respect for business, he thinks we’re all crooks, that we do nothing to enrich the world.’
    ‘That’s sad.’ She turned moss green eyes on him that shone with compassion. ‘You’re so successful. Your father should be proud of you.’
    ‘I wish someone would tell him that.’ Suddenly, Seb felt exposed, raw. And he wondered why he had shared that with her. He would never normally betray such weakness to anyone. What was happening to him? It made him feel slightly uneasy. Then he remembered their lovemaking and realised that she had still kept something from him. Perhaps even duped him, then he had to smile, she had played her part of Scheherazade to a “t” she had held something back, kept him wanting more. Driving here this evening, thinking about her as he had done for days on end, anticipating their coupling, he had wanted the ultimate. He had wanted her to surrender totally to him. The French called it “the little death” the act of orgasm, that final giving of yourself to another. He had wanted her to give him that prize, to trust him enough to sacrifice herself to him totally while they were locked together as one, while he was inside her. And yet, she had focussed entirely on his pleasure. She had known what she had been doing when she’d ridden him to completion. And here she was, lying next to him, with the concert and the searingly emotional music coming to an end, the strings of the orchestra sublime in their beauty and she had kept that one prize from him. Like Scheherazade, she had left him wanting more. A quote of Shakespeare’s came to him like a bolt out of the blue. He hadn’t thought of it since school days but it was about Cleopatra and now he remembered thinking he would never meet a woman like that: “age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.” It might just be, Seb wondered with fascination, that he had met the one woman who could keep him interested. The thought excited him and terrified him in equal amounts.

Chapter Six
    BREEZE HAD TOTALLY AVOIDED Seb