Fortnight of Fear Read Online Free

he said, “Maybe we should take a bottle of champagne upstairs.”
    Anna smiled. “I’m not a prostitute, you know. The barman thinks I’m a prostitute, but of course prostitutes are good for business, provided they are suitably dressed and behave according to the standards expected by the hotel. If you take me up to your room now, let me tell you truthfully that you will be only the second man I have ever slept with.”
    Gil gave Anna a complicated shrug with which he intended to convey the feeling that he was flattered by what she had said, but couldn’t take her seriously. A woman with Anna’s style and Anna’s body and Anna’s sexual directness had slept in the whole of her life with only one man?
    Anna said, “You don’t believe me.”
    â€œI don’t have to believe you, do I? That’s part of the game.” Gil thought that response was quite clever and sophisticated.
    But Anna reached out toward him and gently picked a single hair from the shoulder of his coat and said very quietly, “It’s not a game, my love.”
    She undressed in silence, close to the window, so that her body was outlined by the cold glow of the streetlights outside, but her face remained in shadow. Her dress slipped to the floor with a sigh. Underneath, she was naked except for a tiny
cache-sexe
of white embroidered cotton. Her breasts were large, almost too large for a woman with such a narrow back, and her nipples were wide and pale as sugar-frosting.
    Gil watched her, unbuttoning his shirt. He could sense her smiling. She came over and buried the fingers of onehand into the curly brown hair on his chest, and tugged at it. She kissed his cheeks, then his lips. Then she reached down and started to unfasten his belt.
    Gil thought:
this is morally wrong, damn it. I’m cheating the woman who gave me my children; the woman who’s waiting for me to come home tomorrow. But how often does a man run into a sexual dream like this? Supposing I tell her to get dressed and leave. I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what it could have been like
.
    Anna slid her hands into the back of his trousers. Her sharp fingernails traced the line of his buttocks, and he couldn’t help shivering. “Lie down on the bed,” she whispered. “Let me make love to you.”
    Gil sat on the edge of the bed, and struggled out of his trousers. Then Anna pushed him gently backwards. He heard the softest plucking of elastic as she took off her cache-sexe. She climbed astride his chest, and sat in the semi-darkness smiling at him, her hair like a soft and mysterious veil. “Do you like to be kissed?” she asked him. “There are so many ways to be kissed.”
    She lifted herself up, and teasingly lowered her vulva so that it kissed his lips. Her pubic hair was silky and long, and rose up in a plume. Gil kissed her, hesitantly at first, then deeper, holding her open with his fingers.
    She gave a deep, soft murmur of pleasure, and ran her fingers through his hair.
    They made love four times that night. Anna seemed to be insatiable. When the first slate-gray light of morning began to strain into the room, and the trams began to boom over Hogesluis again, Gil lay back in bed watching her sleep, her hair tangled on the pillow. He cupped her breast in his hand, and then ran his fingers gently all the way down the flatness of her stomach to her dark-haired sex. She was more than a dream, she was irresistible. She was everything that anybody could desire. Gil kissed her lightly on the forehead, and when she opened her eyes andlooked up at him and smiled, he knew that he was already falling in love with her.
    â€œYou have to go back to England today,” she said, softly.
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe.”
    â€œYou mean you could stay a little longer?”
    Gil looked at her, but at the same time he made a conscious effort to picture Margaret, as if he were watching a