Ever After excerpt
Venice, Italy, 1594
In the hour before dawn, Giambattista Basile lay back and sighed. “Scusimi.” he whispered. He shifted and straightened the bed sheet where it had bunched under his back. Always the gentleman, he reached across the woman he knew as Yu Yan and tugged the top sheet over her nakedness. She reacted by throwing the sheet off.
“Too, Warm,” she murmured, and rolled onto her side, facing him before snuggling in and working her shoulder into his embrace. She flipped her hair over his encircling arm and stretched against him, rolling the tension from her muscles, then sighed contentedly, her head on his chest.
He pulled a pillow under his head and allowed his gaze to caress her. Her hair cascaded over his arm and down her back, a waterfall of black silk. Tiny beads of sweat clung to her coppery bronze skin in the flickering candlelight. He inhaled slowly. Their lovemakaing added a musky scent to the humid, salt-tinged air from outside.
Water in the canal below lapped against the stones of the building, soothing him. He smiled and turned his attention to the open window. Above the silhouetted rooftops, the moon decended toward a rose-hued horizon. Rain today. Perhaps they would stay in all day, listening as fat drops on the tiles sang then to sleep in a lover’s lullaby.
As he returned his attention to the woman in his arms, his lips brushed against her hair. “Mia bella amore.” He let the words trickle out, hoping she was awake.
“Yes?” Her murmured reply betrayed no hint of sleep.
“I wish,” he said, “this moment could last forever. It is like a soap bubble in the sun.” After only a month, he had already noticed the first signs of restlessness in her — the way her eyes moved to the horizon for a moment, or a smile in conversation, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. In his experience, this was something unusual in women and it made her all the more interesting to him.
She shifted. Her muscles tensed under smooth skin before relaxing again. “Forever is a very long time to maintain perfection, Giambattista.”
“Si,” he said. “You are right, of course.” The wisdom of a thousand years in one with barely a quarter of a century. No wonder her people were so exotic. “I so loved the story with the little enchanted man and the spinning wheel.” He moved against her. “Perhaps you would grace me with another?”
Promethea lifted her head and settled her chin on his chest. Her lips curved as she blinked eyes the shape of almonds and the color of pitch. “A bedtime story?”
“No, my dove. Just a story, so I may hear your voice. It is incantare — enchanting.”
“Are you familiar with the tales told by the Greek courtesan Rhodopis while she was a slave in Egypt?”
He thought for a moment. “No, I’m sorry. Please, I would love to hear one.”
Her single chuckle was deep and throaty. “Yes, my love.” Her fingers trailed down his abdomen. She cupped him in her hand. “Then, perhaps we can spend the day searching for perfection.”
And she began the story…
* * *
Ella sat lone on the granite stairs leading to her garden as the sky cleared. Te rain-soaked, fresh growth on the trees loosened fat drops of water into puddles beneath. The birds chirped out season’s change. These things always brought her joy.
No longer.
The back door of the house creaked open. Martha stepped out tossing Ella a look as unyielding as the stones on which she sat. “There’s work to be done.”
With a sigh, she followed Martha into the dark, stuffy kitchen. “Finish making supper while your sisters get dressed, and be quick about it.”
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And the entire PROMETHEUS SAGA print anthology, including all twelve stories, is here: