Obsession (9780061887079) by Gloria Vanderbilt Read Free Book Online

importance. Without support of the world by my side I grieve. What is left? For Maîtresse: Alone, supported by transient memory of a beloved that never was mine. For Wife: Husband, supported by power of the legend of Talcilla. How bitter these truths. I grieve alone without support of the world by my side. What is left? Memory and the beauty and luxury of Akeru. Maja always admonished us at Janus Club never to let the secret place in the center of our hearts be touched, for if we did it would be fatal. How bitter to learn that this is true. I let myself fall in love with you as Wife falls in love with Husband, not as your stony-hearted Priscilla but as a woman who is blessed with wonder of the heart. I’ll tear up this letter after I finish it—althoughwhat I’m really itching to do is send it on to Priscilla by overnight courier. It is imperative she read it. I crave she know of my existence. She must. She will . But in some strange way (I can’t explain why) I won’t. Perhaps because it would negate the memories of the paradise you and I created at Akeru, which is all I have left. In this realm you will always belong to me and I will always be your Queen. How could we have known this past week that your visit would be the last….
    Hours in the enclosed garden by the marble fountain you’d commissioned in Florence, a scallop shell as one Botticelli chose for his Venus, and—on the ancient, ivy-covered wall above as on the carved doors to the entrance of Akeru—the double-tailed siren sculpted in my image, but with this difference: in my hand a cowrie shell with a gentle waterfall splashing onto the lilies below. Naked you’d carried me to the center of the fountain’s shell, placing meprecisely where the water, warmed by the sun, would trickle down between my legs finding the spot to please. Sitting back enjoying the effect it had on me, until concerned you’d hurried into the house, returning with a paper Japanese parasol to shield me from the sun as I called out, “Sing a song of Solomon—let my beloved come into her garden and eat his pleasant fruit.” Laughing, you artfully entwined the parasol into the wisteria on the wall above the fountain, how relaxed you’d been, interested only in my pleasure as I lay back closing my eyes, but after a while wanting the pressure of the water falling between my legs to increase I reached out to you, asking your finger to follow the water as it trickled over my mons, down onto my clit, on behind my tulip before plopping into the marble scallop of the shell.
    â€œNo, sweet Bee,” you’d smiled. “It amuses me to see if you can be aroused without my interference.”
    Enjoyable at first it became somewhat of a torment, drifting suspended in this slightly aroused state, longing for your finger to bring release.
    You had no pity. I moved this way and that hoping to entice you as you called me sweet names—“my spouse of spouses, my milking honey bee, my cat of catkins”—as the nipples on my breasts puckered, swaying toward you I begged for your touch. Still you resisted—not even my mons, which at your bidding had been waxed, plumped up, as you liked, that very morning, patted with opaline powder to satin smoothness, tempted you. But nothing aroused me to your satisfaction—until you whispered—I could barely hear:
    â€œShall I insert you with a sweet carrot from our garden,” and, as you said this, I overflowed in a stream of yellow salt-honey mixing with the sweet spring water dribbling down from the fountain.
    â€œYou’ve done well, Queen Bee, yes, well indeed,”and, lifting me, you carried me back into the bedroom and oh god, in an act of high spirits how joyously we made love.
    Good-bye my darling,
    Bee
    Â 
    Alone since Talbot’s death Bee chose to wear white caftans sewn by nuns in Florence according to her specifications. Linen from Rheims, others of