Seduced by Innocence by Lucy Gordon Read Free Book Online

wearing, yet she was rather taken with her new, more glamorous self. But Maurizio shook his head when he saw her. “It’s perfect for her,” Zena declared. “Youthful and daring.”
    “Too daring,” Maurizio insisted.
    “So? The young can afford to take risks. Signorina Wainright has a perfect figure. She should show it off. Later will be too late.”
    “Hey, don’t I get a say in this argument?” Terri asked, amused and bewildered. “I like it.”
    “It doesn’t suit you,” Maurizio said firmly. “Try something else.” He saw her looking at him askance and broke into a smile that seemed to make her heart somersault. “I’m being intolerably overbearing, aren’t I?”
    “Yes,” the two women said with one voice.
    He assumed an expression of penitence that didn’t fool Terri. This man was a natural autocrat and any appearance of regret was merely a device for getting his own way. Already she could divine that much about him. But it didn’t matter. The fact that he cared so much what she wore caused a sweet singing inside her. He should have been back at the Midas completing his preparations for tonight, but on such a busy day he’d chosen to be here with her, trying to make her appearance fit his inner vision of her. Just to know that she figured in his inner vision gave her a feeling of excitement that was filled with delightful danger. If she was to look the way he wanted, what would he do then?
    At Maurizio’s insistence, she tried another dress but that didn’t please him, either. He seemed unable to explain what he wanted, yet he knew exactly what he didn’t want. At last Zena produced a white dress that Terri had briefly considered and discarded, and said wearily, “There’s only this one left.”
    “I don’t really want a floor-length gown,” Terri began to say, and stopped when she saw Maurizio’s face. “What is it?” she asked anxiously.
    He seemed to come out of a dream. “Try that one on,” he said with an effort.
    “But it’s white. I don’t normally wear white. I think it looks pallid with my coloring.”
    “Try it,” he repeated.
    The dress was skintight and hugged her so closely that she had to strip off every stitch of underclothing to get a smooth line. Yet the neckline was demurely high, coming right up to her throat. There were no sleeves and the gown was cut away over the shoulders so that everything hung from the neck. Terri drew in her breath at the vision that faced her in the mirror. This was a dress for a woman who was supremely confident in her own body, yet who kept that body for herself, revealing only a little, and that in the most tantalizing and subtle manner; it was for a woman who held back, seeming to offer much yet offering nothing that couldn’t be withdrawn; suggesting much, yet nothing that couldn’t be denied. Only a subtle temptress could wear such a dress, and Terri simply didn’t feel up to it.
    “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, “but not for me.”
    “I disagree,” Maurizio said in a strange voice. “I think it suits you to perfection.”
    “Perhaps you’d like to take a look at yourself next door,” Zena suggested smoothly. “You can watch yourself walking in the mirrors.” After showing Terri into a long room, one whole wall of which was taken up by mirrors, she discreetly faded away.
    Terri stood for a moment, trying not to hear Madge’s voice crying “Slut!” in her mind. Only a slut would wear such a dress, so calculated to warn men off and lure them on at the same time. Slowly, Terri began to walk the length of the room, watching her own movements in the mirrors. Mysteriously, her body seemed to have changed shape in some indefinable way. Now it glided as though it had been born to wear such a provocative garment. It knew just how to walk to reveal the curve of hip beneath the chaste white silk. Maurizio’s face came into her mind, his eyes warm and penetrating as she’d seen them last night. She knew he wanted her