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and there were additional springs of coiled steel in the bedframe where the
other had rigid wooden slats.
Details like that shouldn't have mattered. In her youth, Theodora and her
partners had reached climax often enough while standing in an alley or even
bending over the starting gate after a horse race, roughly. screened by a
dozen or so happy men awaiting their turn.
Here, though, everything mattered. And perhaps this one detail, resiliance
instead of softness beneath the buttocks or thighs, meeting and then
.redoubling the gentle shock of the thrust -
It should work. Theodora had been so close, so many times and in so many ways,
that she knew this would be the final step to the heights of splendid orgasm.
With a smile that could have meant anything but weakness of purpose, Theodora
strode to the bedroom door to greet her husband.
Sulla had just entered the reception court. Servants bowed obsequiously in
front of the walls painted with false columns, and Mussolini continued to
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babble in terrified cheerfulness despite the obvious attempts of his master to
brush him away.
Sulla's Luck had paused at the ornately carven marble table beside the
ornamental pond, waiting for the Dictator to free himself from the rancid
emptiness of his chamberlain. There was a faint smile on the face of Sulla's
Luck. By now, the expression was as familiar to Theodora as the ache of failed
climax - and almost as unpleasant.
Good evening, little heart," called Theodora from her doorway. "May I speak
with you for a moment?"
Sulla turned, scowling. His mouth was poised to say something devastating
enough to silence Benito. He saw his wife, and his eyes lost their distraction
while the planes of his face cleared.
The only make-up which Theodora wore was the rouge which turned her lips into
a Cupid's-bow of brilliant carmine. Her outer tunic was of black silk with a
rippled pattern which echoed her hair and set off the perfect white of her
skin.
Her undertunic was silk as well, but diaphanous. Theodora stood with her left
arm raised on the door jamb and her right hip shot out so that only the toes
of that gilded slipper touched the mosiac floor. Her right hand rested on her
hipbone aid it tugged the upper tunic just high enough to hint at her pubic
triangle as well as displaying the marvelously-detailed muscles of her
dancers' thighs.
"I - " said the Dictator. No one else spoke or moved, though Theodora glimpsed
the cook, Apicius, poised at the kitchen door like a squirrel frozen in
uncertainty as to which way to jump.
Sulla turned.
His Luck shrugged and smiled more broadly. "Who knows?" said Sulla s Luck to
the question that need not be spoken to be asked. "So long as one tries,
there's hope."
Begone, then," Sulla barked to his retainers as he stepped toward the bedroom
with a haste he had not shown in ages, as time was reckoned here.
Apicius hopped back into the kitchen to lower the fire beneath his braising
pan. The rest of the servants would wait and titter hopefully, in comers of
the reception court and leaning over the rail of the loggia above, but the
Dictator cared as little about that as Theodora did.
She closed the door as Sulla stepped past her, but she eluded his grasp with a
band and a pirouette which made his face darken at what he thought was
ill-timed coquetry. He had already Shrugged off his toga and flung it to the
top of a clothes press.
"First, little heart," the woman whispered huskily as she guided Sulla to the
new couch, "let me show you what came with your caravan."
"What?" said the Dictator in amazement. Emotion left his face again as his
mind grappled coldly with the new data and decided how to respond. "I was just
at the warehouse. Why haven't I been informed?"
The curse that Theodora's mind ripped out at her verbal misstep would have
been enough by itself to threaten her soul's salvation, but she kept her lips
smiling as she protested aloud, "There'll be time for that later, dearest Sit
here for just a moment."
"Woman," snapped the Dictator, "this is important!"
"So," said the woman, her eyes sparking like flint and black steel, "is this."
She had already undone the clasp of the filigreed pin which fastened her upper
tunic. When she twitched her shoulders now, the black silk cascaded to her
feet, licking across the surface of the transparent undergarment.
Paradise was setting with a creamy, almost golden glow beneath the cloudbanks.
The light turned Theodora's skin to ivory and darkened the cones other
fiercely erect nipples.
Sulla allowed himself to be guided to a seat on the end of the couch. His
mouth was slightly open, and his left hand fumbled repeatedly as it undid the
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sash of his tunic.
"What?" he muttered as the springs lifted with a soft moan beneath him.
"It's from Paradise, my heart, my dearest dear," said Theodora, embroidering
what she knew with what she believed. She lifted both hands to the throat of
her tunic and ripped the garment with deliberate strength. Her breasts were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]