In the Flesh Read Free Page A

animal skin with her dainty hand pressed between her thighs, he still couldn’t shake off the notion that she wasn’t quite as licentious and free thinking as such a pose suggested.
    What are you, my Beatrice? A hedonistic voluptuary or an untouched Vestal? Either way, you’re everything I dreamed of…and more.
    It was impossible to decide which role excited him the most, but what he did know for sure was that Beatrice Weatherly had bewitched him. His ensorcellment had begun the first instant he’d set eyes on the card now back in his pocket, but meeting her in the living, vibrant flesh had increased it a thousandfold.
    The collection of photographs had been circulating sub rosa at his club for a while, a minor sensation, and bored one day, he’d asked a friend to pass him one.
    The sense of shock had been like a blow to his head, heart and gut all in the same moment. He’d been stunned to silence by a young woman’s exquisite, naked beauty, and he still couldn’t entirely deduce why that was so when he’d seen many gorgeous nudes in his adult life. But shock had turned to arousal, and arousal to a worrying obsession. He’d meant to meet Beatrice Weatherly in order to free himself, but now, instead, everything he’d felt seeing the photographs was validated.
    Her face, in animation, didn’t possess the classic perfection of some of the society lovelies he’d courted. Miss Weatherly wasn’t even as delicate as the photographic rendering had suggested. There was a wild, untamed quality about her, something he couldn’t quite define and which she didn’t seem to be aware of herself. Her complexion had a creamy, almost animal vigor and her hair was so savage a red that the photograph’s hand tinting had merely hinted at it. He wouldn’t go so far as to say she was coarse or uncouth, quite the reverse, but she seemed to overflow with health and energy, and perhaps appetites that more delicate hothouse paragons sadly lacked.
    And her body, oh God, her scented body.
    How could she possibly appear as erotic and alluring in her outdated and obviously painstakingly made-over evening gown as she did out of it? It wasn’t attributable to any amount of corsetry or sundry feminine mechanicals, even though Ritchie was well acquainted with what women wore beneath their costumes.
    No, with Beatrice Weatherly, every attraction came from the woman herself. Her dark green eyes, her fierce Amazonian expression, the way her head came up and she gasped as he challenged her.
    I’ll make you gasp, Miss Weatherly. You can be sure of that. And even if you’re still angry with me, you’ll be glad you let me.
    A footman appeared at his elbow with a tray of champagne, and about to reach for a glass, Ritchie paused. He’d been knocked far too far off-kilter in the past few moments to be satisfied by frothy French wine.
    “Bring me a glass of whiskey, if you would?” His own voice sounded strange to him, as if he really had suffered an almighty blow. But the servant seemed to notice nothing amiss and stepped away smartly on his errand.
    Gazing out into the glittering throng of bejeweled women and immaculately dressed men, it seemed to Ritchie as if they were projections floating on a screen. They weren’t real, just flickering, moving images such as he’d seen at a demonstration by Monsieur Le Prince in Leeds a couple of years ago.
    Only the now-hidden Beatrice Weatherly was real to him, and discreetly, so as to avoid attention, he slid her photograph out of his pocket again and savored the contrast between it and the living woman.
    Both were sublime to behold.
    In the image, Beatrice was unstudied, dreamy and natural, her eyes averted from the camera in a private moment, so unlike the brazen stares of most naked models.
    In the flesh, she met his gaze with fire and mettle and challenge.
    Both incarnations stirred his loins to an alarming degree. And much, he admitted uncomfortably, in the manner they’d once stirred for his