Perfect Shadows Read Free

best that
you not come again,’ my father said, thrusting my cloak and my small bundle of
belongings into my hands. I’ve not been back to Canterbury, nor will I ever
return to that house. I am as the dead to them, and they to me.”
    “Hero” seemed to feel the depth of my pain and humiliation. She
took my hand for a moment, then reached up to run her long fingers through my
hair. I trembled as she drew my face close to hers, kissed my eyes, then my
mouth, licking my lips with her soft tongue. I was amazed to feel arousal, not
the disgust occasioned by my few perfunctory performances with the tavern
trulls I’d drunkenly attempted upon dares from my friends. I moaned and thrust
my tongue deep into her mouth, my hand falling to her hip. Her hands were busy
loosening my doublet, unlacing my points, slipping in beneath my shirt to
caress me, then trailing down to the fastenings of my trunk-hose. I gasped as
she slid her hand between my thighs, then up to my groin. “Stop!” I groaned and
she chuckled.
    “Is your fire all for poetry now and none left for the flesh? Do
you really desire that I stop?”
    “Yes. No! But I do not even know your name,” I said lamely and
cursed my faltering speech: the great poet at a drunken loss for words. She
chuckled again, pulled her hands from my clothing, and poured more wine.
    “I am Rózsa Treska Guadalupe de Salinas y Miklos, but I am
called Rózsa la Loba,” she said softly, handing me the glass. I drained it and
she filled it again
    “Spanish?” I was both surprised and interested.
    “Spanish and Hungarian,” she replied. “My godfather and
guardian, Nicolas von Poppelau, is Bohemian, a friend of my mother’s family. My
parents were killed and I have lived with him ever since.” She smiled and
anticipated my next question. “They were murdered by the Inquisition. Nicolas
spirited me out of Spain, back to my mother’s family in Hungary. They did not
want me either: ‘la Loba’ is another name for ‘half-breed’, you know.”
    “I thought it meant ‘she-wolf ’,” I said feeling dizzy from more
than just the wine—how was she doing this to me?
    “That as well,” she smiled and kissed me deeply before helping
me out of my clothing. She stood for a second, slipped off her gown and let it
pool around her ankles. I watched the firelight play over her body. She was
slender, almost, as the boy I had thought her, with small underdeveloped
breasts, slim hips, and flat stomach. She knelt beside me, pushing me back on
the pillows, her hair caressing my chest as she kissed my nipples. “You smell
of lavender and roses,” she murmured. The effort involved in actually forcing
my landlady to provide the weekly bath we’d agreed upon was prodigious, but I
was happy that at least this time I had persevered. I hated bedding an unwashed
lover myself—Rózsa realized that my thoughts were wandering and nipped me
sharply, then trailed her tongue lightly down my body. She took my manhood into
her mouth for a moment, then continued stroking me with her hand as she slowly
moved her lips to my inner thigh. I shuddered, gasped at a sudden sharp pain as
she bit me, then surrendered to the most intense carnal ecstasy I had ever
felt. It was pure pleasure; all that I thought of as myself, all thought
itself, vanished in wave after wave of bliss.
    As the feeling receded I felt thoroughly enervated, almost
drained, unable to tell how much time had passed. She rose from me then, licked
her lips and smiled as she fetched a basin and ewer that sat nearby. “I wonder
that it’s not dripping from the ceiling,” I mumbled as she washed my spilled
seed off me. Try as I would, I could not stay awake. I mumbled an apology,
which was genially accepted, then gave myself over to sleep.
    Before dawn she woke me with a kiss. I reached for her, but she
laughed and eluded me, thrusting my clothing into my seeking hands. I sat up
and began to dress, feeling oddly giddy and light headed, as if I had